Multiscale entropy analysis of different spontaneous motor unit discharge patterns

This study explores a novel application of multiscale entropy (MSE) analysis for characterizing different patterns of spontaneous electromyogram (EMG) signals including sporadic, tonic and repetitive spontaneous motor unit discharges, and normal surface EMG baseline. Two algorithms for MSE analysis, namely, the standard MSE and the intrinsic mode entropy (IMEn) (based on the recently developed multivariate empirical mode decomposition method), were applied to different patterns of spontaneous EMG. Significant differences were observed in multiple scales of the standard MSE and IMEn analyses ( p < 0.001) for any two of the spontaneous EMG patterns, while such significance may not be observed from the single-scale entropy analysis. Compared to the standard MSE, the IMEn analysis facilitates usage of a relatively low scale number to discern entropy difference among various patterns of spontaneous EMG signals. The findings from this study contribute to our understanding of the nonlinear dynamic properties of different spontaneous EMG patterns, which may be related to spinal motoneuron or motor unit health.