Characterizing a high resolution color display performance using a Prichard photometer

Abstract

Measuring the performance of a cathode ray tube (CRT) or liquid crystal display (LCD) is necessary to enable endto-end system modeling and characterization of currently used high performance analog imaging systems, such as 2nd Generation FLIR systems. If the display is color, the performance measurements are made more difficult because of the underlying structure of the color pixel as compared to a monochrome pixel. Out of the various characteristics of interest, we focus on determining the gamma value of a display. Gamma quantifies the non-linear response between the input gray scale and the displayed luminance. If the displayed image can be corrected for the display's gamma, an accurate scene can be presented or characterized for laboratory measurements such as MRT (Minimum Resolvable Temperature) and CTF (Contrast Threshold Function). In this paper, we present a method to determine the gamma to characterize a color display using the Prichard 1980A photometer. Gamma corrections were applied to the test images for validating the accuracy of the computed gamma value. The method presented here is a simple one easily implemented employing a Prichard photometer.