Theoretical and applied aspects of night vision goggle resolution and visual acuity assessment

摘要

The image quality of night vision goggles is often expressed in terms of visual acuity, resolution or modulation transfer function. The primary reason for providing a measure of image quality is the underlying assumption that the image quality metric correlates with the level of visual performance that one could expect when using the device, for example, target detection or target recognition performance. This paper provides a theoretical analysis of the relationships between these three image quality metrics: visual acuity, resolution and modulation transfer function. Results from laboratory and field studies were used to relate these metrics to visual performance. These results can also be applied to non-image intensifier based imaging systems such as a helmet-mounted display coupled to an imaging sensor.