Feature dimensionality reduction for myoelectric pattern recognition: A comparison study of feature selection and feature projection methods

• The filter based feature selection approach enables robust EMG feature dimensionality reduction without needing to change ongoing, practical use of classification algorithms.
• High overall accuracies can be achieved in classification of seven different forearm motions with a small number of top ranked original EMG features obtained from the forearm muscles.
• Effective feature selection allows for a possible solution to the feature dimensionality reduction in myoelectric pattern recognition.

This study investigates the effect of the feature dimensionality reduction strategies on the classification of surface electromyography (EMG) signals toward developing a practical myoelectric control system. Two dimensionality reduction strategies, feature selection and feature projection, were tested on both EMG feature sets, respectively. A feature selection based myoelectric pattern recognition system was introduced to select the features by eliminating the redundant features of EMG recordings instead of directly choosing a subset of EMG channels. The Markov random field (MRF) method and a forward orthogonal search algorithm were employed to evaluate the contribution of each individual feature to the classification, respectively. Our results from 15 healthy subjects indicate that, with a feature selection analysis, independent of the type of feature set, across all subjects high overall accuracies can be achieved in classification of seven different forearm motions with a small number of top ranked original EMG features obtained from the forearm muscles (average overall classification accuracy >95% with 12 selected EMG features). Compared to various feature dimensionality reduction techniques in myoelectric pattern recognition, the proposed filter-based feature selection approach is independent of the type of classification algorithms and features, which can effectively reduce the redundant information not only across different channels, but also cross different features in the same channel. This may enable robust EMG feature dimensionality reduction without needing to change ongoing, practical use of classification algorithms, an important step toward clinical utility.