Centre for Biomedical Engineering of Politecnico di Torino, Italy
The First Three Years
The Centre for Biomedical Engineering of the Politecnico di Torino is a joint venture of the Politecnico di Torino and the Regional Health Management organisation of Piemonte, Italy. Established at the end of 1996, it carries out research in engineering of the neuromuscular system and is a partner in the European Union funded projects Surface EMG for Non-Invasive Assessment of Muscles (SENIAM), www.rrd.nl/seniam.htm and Prevention of Neuromuscular Disorders in the Operation of Computer Input Devices (PROCID) www.lindholmen.se/procid. Additional support comes from local institutions (Compagnia di San Paolo, Fondazione CRT, Camera di Commercio, Regione Piemonte), the National Institute of Health and the National Institute for Ageing.
One doctoral candidate, three research fellows and a dozen students work with Professor Merletti on non-invasive characterisation of human muscles. The mission is the development of techniques for monitoring muscle conditions in ergonomics, neurology, occupational health, sport, space, geriatric and rehabilitation medicine. The centre has received visiting professors on sabbatical from Boston and Minneapolis (USA) and from Fredericton (Canada) and has sent visiting researchers to the University of Queensland in Brisbane (Australia) and to a number of European academic institutions. The Politecnico di Torino is sponsoring exchanges by partially covering accommodation expenses and providing studio apartments for 15 Euro/day.
The centre operates with clinical partners, among which are the S. Maugeri Foundation, the National Research Council, the San Raffaele Hospital and the National Institute of Ageing, to study muscle fatigue and individual motor unit behaviour using surface EMG electrode arrays and sophisticated signal processing/ understanding techniques.
The main activities of the centre concern the extraction of information from surface EMG in static (isometric) and dynamic conditions. Signals are detected by means of electrode arrays and the extracted information concerns a) muscle fatigability (myoelectric manifestations of muscle fatigue), single motor units features and firing rate, non-invasive decomposition of the EMG in the constituent action potential trains, spatial filters for 'deblurrring' surface EMG and b) multichannel EMG systems and techniques for gait analysis, occupational and sport medicine.
A surface EMG generation model and a multimedia teaching tool have been developed to facilitate dissemination of results and their transfer to the clinical and industrial community. A demonstration version of the teaching tool can be downloaded, with other teaching material, from the website, which has a large number of connections to other sites on the same topic. Prototype devices for detection and information extraction from surface EMG are developed and made available to other research groups. Part of the results of the lab activities will be included in the CD-ROM produced and distributed by SENIAM, which will be available at the end of 1999.
Professor Roberto Merletti
Email: merletti@polito.it
Web: http://www.polito.it/centri/corep/bioing