Visual display characterization using flicker photometry techniques

A complete colorimetric characterization of a cathode ray tube (CRT) display was generated using an all-visual psychophysical measurement procedure. This process requires no external props or matching stimuli and uses a three-stage approach for estimating the display’s (1) system nonlinearities (i.e., gamma), (2) channel luminance ratios (i.e., white-point setting), and (3) phosphor chromaticity matrix. Simple homochromatic brightness matching experiments are used to solve the system nonlinearities using either spatially or temporally modulated stimuli. A novel heterochromatic minimum-flicker technique is presented for estimating the relative luminance contributions of each display channel. Finally, a chromaticity selection process is used to choose an appropriate chromaticity set for the display. These components are used to populate a model of the colorimetric mixing characteristics of the display device. The visually populated display model was compared to an instrumentation-based process. The results of this analysis showed that the all-visual characterization process compared favorably to the instrumentation-based model. For 12 subjects, the mean colorimetric errors (averaged across subjects) for a typical color-management task were approximately 2 CIE ΔE94 units with maximum colorimetric errors (averaged across subjects) of approximately 4 CIE ΔE94 units.