The Sonifiction of Emg Data

This paper describes the sonification of electromyographic (EMG) data and an experiment that was conducted to verify its efficacy as an auditory display of the data. A real-time auditory display for EMG has two main advantages over the graphical representation: it frees the eyes of the analyst, or the physiotherapist, and it can be heard by the patient too who can then try to match with his/her movement the target sound of a healthy person. The sonification was found to be effective in displaying known characteristics of the data. The ‘roughness’ of the sound was found to be related to the age of the patients. The sound produced by the sonification was also judged to be appropriate as an audio metaphor of the data it displays; a factor that contributes to its potential to become a useful feedback tool for the patients.