Generation of low-contrast sinusoidal test patterns on a high-brightness display

By using a technique of addressing individual subpixels, low-contrast sinusoidal test patterns were generated on a high-brightness color LCD. Detection tasks were performed using 2AFC experiments, and the value obtained for the contrast threshold was found to agree well with previously published data. As long as the shape of the pattern was close to sinusoidal, a good correlation was found between pattern contrast and detection rate. The influence of the eye-adaptation luminance level was studied and compared to the f-factor published by Barten. Luminance non-uniformities in the background did not cause any significant change in the detection threshold.