Measuring Color Defects in Flat Panel Displays Using HDR Imaging and Appearance Modeling

Measuring and quantifying color defects in flat panel displays (FPDs) are critical in the FPD industry and related business. Color defects are traditionally investigated by professional human assessors, as color defects are subtle perceptual phenomena that are difficult to detect using a camera system. However, human-based inspection has hindered the quantitative analysis of such color defects. Thus, the industrial automation of color defect measurement in FPDs has been severely limited even by leading manufacturers accordingly. This paper presents a systematic framework for the measurement and numerical evaluation of color defects. Our framework exploits high-dynamic-range imaging to robustly measure physically meaningful quantities of subtle color defects. In addition to the application of advanced imaging technology, an image appearance model is employed to predict the human visual perception of color defects as human assessors do. This proposed automated framework can output quantitative analysis of the color defects. This paper demonstrates the performance of the proposed workflow in investigating subtle color defects in FPDs with a high accuracy.