In-lab Evaluation of New Tattoo Skin Electrodes for Measuring Masticatory Electromyographic Activity. 2025
The electromyographic (EMG) assessment of masticatory muscles helps to diagnose temporomandibular disorders (TMDs) and bruxism. However, conventional EMG acquisition involves complex equipment and wired electrodes, limiting their use in non-clinical environments. Electronic tattoos fabricated with printing technologies have emerged as a new type of lightweight, flexible wearable sensors that can facilitate electrophysiologic recordings. This study introduces new comfortable tattoo electrodes for the masticatory muscles and aims to conduct a first evaluation of their EMG recording capabilities. Through screen-printing technology, we designed and fabricated an ultra-thin tattoo with 4 electrodes of 3 mm diameter that covered the area over the masseter and temporalis muscles. The tattoo was compared to commercial electrodes via simultaneous EMG recordings during different chewing tasks conducted by 5 participants in the laboratory setting. The results showed an excellent correlation (0.95) between the EMG envelopes from the tattoo and the commercial electrodes, with highly similar morphology. The tattoo also enabled precise automatic detection of masticatory EMG bursts (97% sensitivity and 96% precision), which were subsequently characterized in terms of amplitude and duration parameters. These results illustrate the promising capabilities of wearable tattoo electrodes to monitor masticatory EMG signals, which would facilitate the unobtrusive assessment of chewing biomechanics and the early detection of prevalent health conditions such as bruxism.Clinical Relevance- This establishes the feasibility of new comfortable tattoo electrodes for masticatory EMG recordings, supporting their potential for real-life monitoring and enhanced detection of TMDs and bruxism.
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