Investigation of an acceleration pipeline for single fiber action potential simulation

Abstract

Surface electromyography (sEMG) records the electrical potentials on the skin surface generated by the electrical activity of muscle fibers. To better understand physiology and to assess signal processing algorithms, sEMG models have been developed in the past. However, numerical models required for modeling accurate geometries very often have a high computational complexity rendering realistic simulations challenging. In order to cope with this challenge, a pipeline is investigated to accelerate the calculation of the single fiber action potential (SFAP) based on the principle of reciprocity. To enable a comparison to an analytical solution, the investigation is carried out in a highly simplified muscle model. The results show that the pipeline is suitable for calculating SFAP with a low mean absolute error sufficient for application in sEMG models. In addition, there is a significant reduction of the calculation time allowing the simulation of even highly complex geometries and a large number of muscle fibers.