Wavelet Compression of EMG Signal
Sarina Mansor, C. Eswaran and Rosli Bin Besar
Faculty of Engineering, Multimedia University, 63100 Cyberjaya, Selangor, Malaysia
Abstract
This paper presents some experimental
results of EMG signal compression using
several types of wavelets. Based on these
results, the optimal wavelet for compressing
EMG signal is identified. Next, a
comparison between the performances of the
wavelet transform and the discrete cosine
transform (DCT) for EMG signal
compression is carried out. The results
indicate that wavelet transforms outperform
the DCT in terms of compression ratios and
signal quality.
1. Introduction
Wavelet transforms have received
significant attention recently from
mathematicians, signal analysts and
engineers as a new tool for signal
compression. Unlike the traditional Fourier
techniques, wavelets are localised both in
time and frequency domain. This feature
makes them suitable for the analysis of
nonstationary signals. One interesting area
of wavelet applications is biomedical
engineering. Wavelets have been applied to
several problems in biomedical signals,
including signal analyses, feature extraction
and data compression; in particular for EEG
and ECG signals. However, analysis of
EMG signals by using wavelet transforms
has not been widely explored yet.
Electromyography (EMG) signals
represent the electrical activity of muscle
during contraction, which provide useful
information for the assessment of
neuromuscular disorders. Generally, the
decomposition of an EMG signal is the
separation of the complex signal into its
constituent motor unit action potentials
(MUAP) [1]. Therefore, most of the analysis
of this signal is focused on the methods to
identify and classify MUAPs [2]. Besides
that, Davies and Reisman [3] have applied
the time-frequency analysis to the EMG
signal, showing a good spectral compression
during fatigue. Lacetra and Olmo [4] have
proposed the use of matched wavelet
transform as a new methodology for EMG
interpretation. The wavelet analysis is
chosen because it matches with the shape of
MUAP, and the resulting wavelet transform
yields the best possible energy localisation
in the time-scale [4]. In other words, the
EMG signal can be best represented by
wavelet transform that leads to several
interesting applications such as MUAP
detection and data compression.
The purpose of this paper is to
demonstrate the potential use of different
types of wavelets for EMG signal
compression. The paper is organised as
follows. The wavelet theory and its fast
pyramidal algorithm are summarised in
Section II. Section III describes the scheme
used to demonstrate the wavelet
compression of EMG signal. The results
obtained by using eight different types of
wavelets are presented in Section IV. The
performances of these wavelets are also
compared with that of discrete cosine
transform (DCT). We conclude with some
remarks in Section V.
 H ↓2
S H
G ↓2
Analysis
DWT
Fig. 1: The forward and inverse discrete wavelet transform
2. Wavelet Theory
The wavelet transforms decomposes a
signal f(t) into its basis functions which are
generated by dilations and translations of a
prototype function ψ called mother wavelet.
− i/ 2 i
ψ i, k ( t ) = 2 ψ(t 2 − k ) ,
The above equation shows that the mother
function is dilated by the integer i and
translated by the integer k. The wavelet
decomposition of a signal can be represented
as below
f ( t ) = ∑ ∑ c i ,k ψi , k
i k
The coefficients ci,k are obtained through
the following inner product:
c i ,k = f ,ψ~i ,k
The function ψ~ is the algebraic dual of
the mother wavelet ψ. In the orthogonal
case, ψ~ and ψ are identical.
In a multiresolution analysis, one really
has two functions: the mother wavelet ψ and
the scaling function φ. It is helpful at this
point to view the scaling function as a low
pass filter and wavelet function as a high
pass filter. For application involving with
↑2 H′
↓2 ↑2 H′ S
↑2 G′
G ↓2 ↑2 G′
Wavelet Coefficients Synthesis
Inverse DWT
digital data and filtering, we need to
discretize the wavelet transform resulting in
the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT).
The mother and scaling functions can be
defined as [5]:
ψ ( t ) = ∑ 2 1/2 h( n )ψ ( 2t − n)
k,i ∈ Ζ n
φ( t ) = ∑ 21 / 2 g ( n )φ( 2t − n)
n
where h(n) and g(n) are highpass and
lowpass filters respectively.
For computation of wavelet transform, we
use the pyramidal algorithm developed by
Mallat [6]. This algorithm has two parts: the
forward algorithm, which serves to compute
the wavelet transform and the backward
algorithm, which computes the inverse
transform.
The forward version consists of two linear
filters, lowpass (G) and highpass (H) which
decompose the signal into low and high
frequency components respectively.
Convolving the signal with H gives us a set
of wavelet coefficients ci,k while the
convolution with G gives us the
approximation coefficients dk. Because of
the redundancy of information, these filters
are down-sampled, throwing away every
other sample at each operation, thus halving
the data each time. The approximation
coefficients dk are then convolved again
with the filters G and H to form the next similar to the one applied for speech signal
level of decomposition. [9].

The backward algorithm simply inverts the Original Reconstructed

data data
process. It combines two linear filters, H′ DWT Truncation IDWT
and G′ with up-sampling operation, which
inserts a zero between data values, doubling Fig.2: The simple scheme of signal compression
the data at each operation. Fig. 1 shows the
operations involved in the wavelet As a sample signal, we use an EMG signal
decomposition and synthesis of the signal. vector of length 4096, representing the
The impulse responses of the decomposition activity of tibialis anterior muscle during
and synthesis filters, h(n) and g(n) are walking. Fig. 3 shows the EMG signal used
related as: for experimentation.
1.5

g ′( n ) = ( −1) n −1
h( n − 1)
1
h′( n ) = (−1) g( n − 1)
n

0.5

Signal Amplitude
Unlike Fourier series which has a single 0
set of basis function, wavelets have infinity
set of basis functions; provided that ψ(t) ∈ -0.5

L2 and -1

+∞ -1.5

∫ ψ(t )dt = 0 -2
−∞ 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 4500
Number of data

There are different trade-offs between how
compactly the basis functions are localised
in space and how smooth they are when
using different types of wavelets. For signal
compression, it is preferable for ψ to have
compact support so that the signal features
in both time and scale can be discriminated
[7]. However, at present, there exist no
theoretical results that can predict which
wavelet is suitable for a particular type of
signal [8]. Usually, the optimal wavelet is
chosen by comparing the performances of
several types of wavelets.
Figure 3: The input EMG signal
After wavelet transformation, all wavelet
coefficients with magnitudes larger than the
threshold value are retained with full
accuracy and the remaining coefficients are
truncated (ie: set to zero). Then, the
compression ratio (CR) is defined as [10]:
CR =
Original number of wavelet coefficients
Number of wavelet coefficients after
thresholding

3. Compression of EMG Signal The threshold value can be adjusted to

To demonstrate the potential of wavelets
for EMG signal compression, we use a
simple scheme of signal compression as
shown in Fig. 2 (truncation approach)
alter the number of preserved coefficients,
thereby changing the compression ratio. The
retained coefficients are used to reconstruct
the signal. In this experiment, we use the
percent root-mean-square difference (PRD)
to measure the numerical distortion between
the original and the reconstructed EMG
signal.
compression ratio is now defined as the ratio
of the number of bits required before and
after encoding. In this experiment, Huffman
coding is employed to improve the
compression ratio. Fig. 5 illustrates the rate-
distortion curves obtained when we encode
the coefficients. From Figs. 4 and 5, it is
clear that the compression ratio is improved
by using the encoder.

where f(i) is the original signal and f$ ( i ) is

40

the reconstructed signal.

35

For comparison, we choose the discrete

cosine transform (DCT) which is the most
30
commonly used transform for data

PRD
compression. A detail description of DCT Db6

Db10
can be found in [11]. 25 Bior3.5

Bior6.8

4. Results and Discussion Coif3

20 Coif5

Sym4

A number of experiments were performed Sym7

to evaluate the ability of wavelets to 15

DCT

10 15 20 25 30 35
compress the EMG signal and to identify the Compression Ratio

optimal wavelet for this type of signal. The Fg. 4: The performance curves of the eight wavelets
wavelet bases used in the experiments are and DCT
Daubechies (Db6 and Db10), Biorthogonal
(Bior3.5 and Bior6.8), Coiflets (Coif3 and
40
Coif5) and Symlets (Sym4 and Sym7).

The rate-distortion curves (PRD versus 35

compression ratio) obtained for eight
wavelets and DCT are shown in Fig. 4. It
can be inferred from this figure that the 30

performance of the wavelet transform is

PRD

Db6

superior to that of DCT with regard to Db10

25 Bior3.5
compression efficiency and reconstruction
Bior6.8
quality. In terms of optimal wavelet, the Coif3

Bior6.8 wavelet performs slightly better than 20 Coif5

the others. Sym4

Sym7

DCT
Wavelet coefficients are encoded in order 15
10 15 20 25 30 35
to reduce the number of bits required for Comp Ratio

transmission/storage. Encoding schemes

such as arithmetic, Huffman, zerotree Fig. 5: The performance curves of the eight wavelets
coding can be used for this purpose. The and DCT when combining with Huffman encoder
The truncation approach used here is simply
based on the magnitude of each individual
coefficient, ignoring the similarity of
neighbouring coefficients. The similarity
properties may result in a better quantization
scheme as they provide a more suitable
threshold criterion for truncation. For
achieving better results, we can use several
wavelet coders which exploits the
correlation between wavelet coefficients;
such as the wavelet compression algorithm
based on embedded zerotree wavelet (EZW)
developed by Michael Hilton [7].
5. Conclusions
Our experiments show the promising use
of wavelet transforms for EMG signal
compression. It has been found that the
results obtained with EMG signal are quite
similar to the one obtained in [7] for the case
of ECG signal. Wavelets also give better
compression efficiency and signal quality
compared to DCT. Better results may be
obtained if a sophisticated coder such as the
embedded zerotree wavelet (EZW) coding
or the discrete wavelet transform coding
with vector quantization is used.
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