Simultaneous and Proportional Finger Motion Decoding Using Spatial Features from High-Density Surface Electromyography

Abstract

Restoring natural and intuitive hand function requires simultaneous and proportional control (SPC) of multiple degrees of freedom (DoFs). This study systematically evaluated the multichannel linear descriptors-based block field method (MLD-BFM) for continuous decoding of five finger-joint DoFs by leveraging the rich spatial information of high-density surface electromyography (HD sEMG). Twenty-one healthy participants performed dynamic sinusoidal finger movements while HD sEMG signals were recorded from the extensor digitorum communis (EDC) and flexor digitorum superficialis (FDS) muscles. MLD-BFM extracted region-specific spatial features, including effective field strength ($Σ$), field-strength variation rate ($Φ$), and spatial complexity ($Ω$). Model performance was optimized (block size: $2 \times 2$; window: 0.15 s) and compared with conventional time-domain features and dimensionality reduction approaches when applied to multi-output regression models. MLD-BFM consistently achieved the highest $\mathrm{R}^2_{\mathrm{vw}}$ values across all models. The multilayer perceptron (MLP) combined with MLD-BFM yielded the best performance ($\mathrm{R}^2_{\mathrm{vw}} = 86.68\% \pm 0.33$). Time-domain features also showed strong predictive capability and were statistically comparable to MLD-BFM in some models, whereas dimensionality reduction techniques exhibited lower accuracy. Decoding accuracy was higher for the middle and ring fingers than for the thumb. Overall, MLD-BFM improved continuous finger movement decoding accuracy, underscoring the importance of taking advantage of the spatial richness of HD sEMG. These findings suggest that spatially structured features enhance SPC and provide practical guidance for designing robust, real-time, and responsive myoelectric interfaces.