Quantifying coordination between agonist and antagonist muscles during a gait

Ankle joint provides propulsion and stability of the gait through coordination of agonist and antagonist muscles. The main goal of this study is to quantify the coordination of the ankle joint agonist and antagonist muscles during a gait. For this, we introduce a Vector cording technique (VCT) that has not previously been applied in EMG signal quantification and validate its feasibility. EMG signals of the muscles were acquired during normal gait (n = 15). By applying two muscle EMG signals in the VCT method, muscle activation could be categorized into 4 patterns of In- (First phase = 1.3±0.5 %; Second phase = 6.9±1.5 %), Anti- (First phase = 1.6±0.6 %; Second phase = 11.9±1.1 %), Tibialis anterior- (First phase = 8.1±0.6 %; Second phase = 9.1±1.5 %), and Medial gastocnemius- (First phase = 1.4±0.5 %; Second phase = 22.1±2.2 %) activations. This categorization allows us to quantify the relative activation between two muscles and the activation of each muscle over time.