A fast implementation for EMG signal linear envelope computation

Numerous medical and biomechanical applications involve electromyogram (EMG) signal processing in real time. Amplitude analysis of the EMG often requires computation of the signal’s linear envelope. For this purpose, several methods are commonly described in the literature; however, not all match the speed requirement of real-time applications. We introduce an implementation which accelerates the computation of EMG signals linear envelopes, based on the pipeline commonly found in the literature for this kind of operation. The algorithm improves the computation’s time requirement, at the expense of memory requirement, by using the result of the envelope’s computation at the previous instant. This algorithm saves approximately 96% of the computation time and allows computing linear envelopes of several EMG signals in real time.