Evaluating the performance of an IR imaging system: A tutorial

At NVESD, the targeting task performance (TIP) metric applies a weighting of different system specifications that is determined from the scene geometry to calculate a probability of task performance. In this correspondence we detail how to utilize an imaging system specification document to obtain a baseline performance estimate using the Night Vision Integrated Performance Model (NV-IPM), the corresponding requirements and potential assumptions. We then discuss how measurements can be performed to update the model to give a more accurate prediction of performance, detailing the procedure taken at NVESD Advanced Sensor Evaluation Facility (ASEF) lab utilizing the Night Vision Laboratory Capture (NVLabCap) software. Finally, we show how the outputs of the measurement can be compared to those of the initial specification sheet based model;and evaluated against a requirements document. The modeling components and data sets produced for this work arc available upon request and will serve as a means to benchmark of performance for both modeling and measurement methods.