Characterization of task performance with viewing instruments.
Recognition of one military vehicle of a group of six was investigated experimentally as a realistic observation task both for vision through image intensifiers and for thermal viewing devices. It is shown that recognition of real targets is visually equivalent to the detection of a circular disk of a certain size. The size of the equivalent disk is characteristic of the difficulty of the observation task. The image quality of viewing instruments can be related to the size of the disk that can just be detected. This measure of image quality includes resolution, low contrast, low luminance, and noise effects. The effective range of viewing instruments is directly scaled to equivalent-disk size and can be taken as a practical measure of image quality.
van Meeteren
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TNO Institute for Perception, Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research, Soesterberg.
D015350:Contrast Sensitivity; D006801:Humans; D008027:Light; D008887:Military Medicine; D008954:Models, Biological; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014796:Visual Perception