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6 Applications and Methods in Biosignal Processing

eral ways to find points of interest in our data. Each way has their own advantages

and disadvantages. MATLAB algorithms will be shown for the use in finding maxima,

minima, and inflections in the course of the signals of the force and the knee joint

angle. In the discussion of the results the focus is set on the second and third stand

phases of the three knee bends which the patient had to execute. As one can see in

the Figure 6.9 the signals of the ground reaction force and the knee joint angles are

more or less oscillating. The second and third stand phases are represented as local

maximums in the signals of the force and the knee joint angle.

First approach

The MATLAB command findpeaks(), is a function that allows the determination of

local maxima of a vector data set. However, function options to find the correct values

of the two stand phases have to be found. To find the peaks in the force and the knee

joint angle data options like “MinPeakProminence“ and “MinPeakHeight” are used.

In the Listing 6.2.2 an example code determines peaks in both force and knee joint

angle data. The results are shown in the Figure 6.12 (a and b). In the angle data the

two relevant peaks of the stand phases are found but in the force data four peaks are

detected., i.e. no significant prominence and other characteristic of the force signal

the peaks of the stand phases could be isolated from the other peaks.

Second approach

A further approach to overcome the above problem, is to apply MATLAB functions

for the derivation. As the measured data is discrete values instead of analytical func-

tions are given Listing 6.2.2. For that reason the MATLAB the functions diff() and

gradient() are used to find maxima, minima, and inflections of the force and joint

angle data. This kind of approach is called numerical derivation.

Listing 6.2.2: Cut-out of the discrete measured data of the force and the knee angle; the time

columns reveal the different time steps of the force and the joint angle data.

time_force

force_value time_angle

angle_value

0

361.4984

0.00

161.1090808

0.017

361.1752

0.03

161.4235965

0.033

360.7442

0.07

161.6854311

0.05

360.3492

0.10

161.6854311

0.067

359.6668

0.13

161.6854311

0.083

359.1999

0.17

161.6854311

0.1

358.733

0.20

161.6854311

0.117

358.2661

0.23

161.6854311

0.133

357.9429

0.27

161.6854311

0.15

357.7274

0.30

161.7405815