Display Mtf Measurements Based on Scanning and Imaging Technologies and Its Importance in the Application Space

Measuring the Modulation Transfer Function (MTF) of a display monitor is necessary for many applications such as: modeling end-to-end systems, conducting perception experiments, and performing targeting tasks in real-word scenarios. The MTF of a display defines the resolution properties and quantifies how well the spatial frequencies are displayed on a monitor. Many researchers have developed methods to measure display MTFs using either scanning or imaging devices. In this paper, we first present methods to measure display MTFs using two separate technologies and then discuss the impact of a display MTF on a system's performance. The two measurement technologies were scanning with a photometer and imaging with a CMOS based camera. To estimate a true display MTF, measurements made with the photometer were backed out for the scanning optics aperture. The developed methods were applied to measure MTFs of the two types of monitors, Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) and Liquid Crystal Display (LCD). The accuracy of the measured MTFs was validated by comparing MTFs measured with the two systems. The methods presented here are simple and can be easily implemented employing either a Prichard photometer or an imaging device. In addition, the impact of a display MTF on the end-to-end performance of a system was modeled using NV-IPM.