Inter-pulse intervals of external anal sphincter surface EMG signals recorded from colorectal cancer patients

Abstract

Intervals between electrical pulses generated by the electrical activity produced by the motor units of an external anal sphincter were studied at four time intervals during multimodal rectal cancer treatment. Probability distribution function of such intervals does not exhibit significant differences for all considered time intervals. It is found that the probability distribution rescaled with an average interval time can be described by means of the stretched exponential function with the threshold dependent scale and shape parameters. Interval trains possess rather strong correlations as their shuffled counterparts show exponential Poisson like probability distribution. Finally the clustering effects were not found as the conditional probability distributions can also be described by the exponential function.