Flicker visibility in scanning‐backlight displays

Abstract— Scanning-backlight technology reduces motion blur caused by the sample-and-hold effect of traditional liquid-crystal displays. A side effect of impulse-type backlight systems is that large-area flicker may be introduced (like in displays using cathode-ray tubes). The seriousness of the perceived large-area flicker is investigated in perception experiments for various implementations of a scanning-backlight system and for different types of image material. Results show that the main factors contributing to the visibility of large-area flicker are refresh rate, temporal luminance distribution within a frame period, spatial luminance distribution in the image, and whether or not there is motion in the image.