Development of a Wireless Multichannel Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Sensor System for Monitoring Muscle Activity

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) technology is a noninvasive technology that can detect the hemoglobin concentration in the shallow tissue of humans in the form of an optical signal and determine the muscle’s activation state based on the change of hemoglobin concentration. It has a broad application prospect in the biomedical and physiological signal analysis. There are specific requirements for the structure of NIRS sensors for different application scenarios. The muscle synergy theory explains that body movements are often accompanied by the cooperation of many different muscles. Therefore, a multichannel NIRS system is necessary for motion recognition. This article presents a distributed multichannel NIRS system. The wireless communication avoids the interference of signal lines, and the equipped upper computer system can display NIRS signals in real time. Our NIRS sensors have three different wavelengths of near-infrared light (750, 800, and 850 nm) and two photodiodes, which can effectively improve the sampling accuracy of the signal. Experimental verification and evaluation prove that our system’s performance and reliability are better than those of other NIRS systems. Finally, cuff occlusion and hand motion experiments demonstrated that blood flow and oxygen consumption are the two main factors that cause hemoglobin concentration changes. We offer a new scheme for NIRS signal analysis that uses the common mode and difference mode of Hb and HbO2, and the results demonstrate its superior performance. In future work, we will discuss the application and effect of the NIRS system in rehabilitation training.