A survey on the feasibility of surface EMG in facial pacing

A survey on the feasibility of surface electromyography (EMG) measurements in facial pacing is presented. Pacing for unilateral facial paralysis consists of the measurement of activity from the healthy side of the face and functional electrical stimulation to reanimate the paralyzed one. The goal of this study is to evaluate the feasibility of surface EMG as a measurement method to detect muscle activations and to determine their intensities. Prior work is discussed, and results from experiments where 12 participants carried out a set of facial movements are presented. EMG was registered from zygomaticus major (smile), orbicularis oris (lip pucker), orbicularis oculi (eye blink), corrugator supercilii (frown), and masseter (chew). Most important facial functions that are limited due to the paralysis are blinking, smiling, and puckering. With majority of the participants, crosstalk between the measured EMG channels was found to be acceptably small to be able to pace smiling and puckering based on detecting their contraction intensities from the healthy side. However, pacing blinking based on orbicularis oculi EMG measurement does not seem possible due to crosstalk from other muscles, but the electro-oculographic (EOG) signals that couple to the same measurement channel could help to detect eye blinks and trigger stimuli. Futhermore, masseter greatly disturbs EMG measurement of most facial muscles, which needs to be addressed in the pacing system to avoid falsely interpreting its activity as the activity of another muscle.