On December 19, at the SMALLL preconference workshops in Nijmegen, together with Prof. Jaap Buurke and Prof. Jaap Harlaar, I had the opportunity to host the so-called Jaap & Jaap show. This "show" is an EMG workshop for colleagues from Flanders and the Netherlands who are involved in movement analysis and use or want to use EMG (electro myography), and we were asked to run this workshop twice during the pre-conference workshops.
As usual, Jaap Harlaar kicked off with a brief introduction on which signals we actually measure via surface EMG, which underlying physiological processes lie behind them and what information the measured EMG signal can provide.
Then it was my honour, together with a volunteer (during the first workshop Bente and during the second one Corien), to demonstrate some practical aspects, such as the placement of electrodes according to the SENIAM guidelines, the effect of soft tissue movement on the EMG signals and how you can suppress these movement artifacts with simple filters in such a way that you get a signal that is as "clean" as possible, so it can be used for clinical interpretation.
During this live instruction we also demonstrated the relationship between EMG and force, show situations in which we can get muscle activity signals from adjacent or deeper muscles in the EMG signal and that we need to take this into account when interpreting the signals and possibly may need to include measuring signals from those adjacent muscles as well
In conclusion, Jaap Buurke, through various examples from clinical practice, showed the trainees the role that the EMG signal can play in the selection of an appropriate treatment options for an individual patient from the various options that may be available to patients with similar movement patterns.
Again, it was great to give the workshop participants this comprehensive overview of clinical use of EMG and to hear the positive feedback from the participants afterwards.
