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Factors affecting the stimulus artifact tail in surface-recorded somatosensory-evoked potentials

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Abstract

Surface-recorded somatosensory-evoked potentials (SEPs) are neural signals elicited by an external stimulus. In the case of electrically induced SEPs, the artifact generated by the stimulation process can severely distort the signal. In some cases, the artifact tail often lasts well into the initiation of the SEP making the determination of absolute latency very difficult. In this work, a new approach was taken to identify factors that affect the tail of the artifact. The methodology adopted was the development of a lumped electrical circuit model of the artifact generation process. While the modeling of the instrumentation hardware is relatively simple, this is not the case with tissue and electrode/skin interface effects. Consequently, this paper describes a novel tissue modeling approach that uses an autoregressive moving average (ARMA) parametric technique and an artificial neural network (ANN) to estimate tissue parameters from experimental data. This coupled with an estimation of the stimulation electrode–skin impedance completes the lumped circuit model. Simulink® (The Mathworks Inc.) was used to evaluate the model under several different conditions. These results show that both the stimulation electrode–skin interface impedance and nature of the body tissue directly under the recording electrodes have a profound effect on the appearance of the stimulus artifact tail. This was verified by experimentally recorded data obtained from the median nerve using surface electrodes. Conclusions drawn from this work include that stimulation electrodes with low series capacitance should be used whenever possible to minimize the duration of the artifact tail.

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Notes

  1. The Math Works, Inc., Nantick, MA, USA

  2. Computer Boards, Inc., Mansfield, MA, USA.

  3. The Math Works, Inc., Nantick, MA, USA.

  4. ‘Digital’ referring to their position on the finger and not implying any signal processing.

  5. Medtronic of Canada Ltd, Mississauga, ON, Canada.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the financial assistance given to this work by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada through Discovery Grants 4475 and 1702. The authors would also like to extend sincere appreciation to the students and staff of the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the University of New Brunswick for their support throughout this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of New Brunswick, PO Box 4400, Fredericton, Canada, E3B 5A3

    Y. Hua, D. F. Lovely & R. Doraiswami

Authors
  1. Y. Hua
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  2. D. F. Lovely
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  3. R. Doraiswami
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Correspondence to D. F. Lovely.

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Hua, Y., Lovely, D.F. & Doraiswami, R. Factors affecting the stimulus artifact tail in surface-recorded somatosensory-evoked potentials. Med Bio Eng Comput 44, 226–241 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-006-0034-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-006-0034-4

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