J. Ding et al., Development of a mathematical model that predicts optimal muscle activation patterns by using brief trains, J APP PHYSL, 88(3), 2000, pp. 917-925
Because muscles must be repetitively activated during functional electrical
stimulation, it is desirable to identify the stimulation pattern that prod
uces the most force. Previous experimental work has shown that the optimal
pattern contains an initial high-frequency burst of pulses (i.e., an initia
l doublet or triplet) followed by a low, constant-frequency portion. Patter
n optimization is particularly challenging, because a muscle's contractile
characteristics and, therefore, the optimal pattern change under different
physiological conditions and are different for each person. This work descr
ibes the continued development and testing of a mathematical model that pre
dicts isometric forces from fresh and fatigued muscles in response to brief
trains of electrical pulses. By use of this model and an optimization algo
rithm, stimulation patterns that produced maximum forces from each subject
were identified.