Perceptual limit to display resolution of images as per visual acuity
Kenichiro Masaoka, Takahiro Niida, Miya Murakami, Kenji Suzuki, Masayuki Sugawara, Yuji Nojiri · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2008
Achieving ultimate visual realness of natural images on a display requires high resolution, so that artifacts due to finite image resolution are undetectable. An image resolution of 30 cycles/degree (cpd) or one pixel/arc-minute is often used as the criterion for viewing conditions when assessing displayed image quality. It is reasoned that if the pixel size is smaller than the separable angle of normal vision (20/20), the pixel structure is invisible and doesn't negatively affect image quality. However, it is not clear whether 30 cpd resolution is adequate to prevent seeing artifacts, especially for observers with better than 20/20 vision. We conducted experiments to find the threshold resolution of natural images and its dependence on visual acuity. Three objects were used; each object was presented 60 times at 5 resolutions (19.5, 26, 39, 52, or 78 cpd) next to the same image at a resolution of 156 cpd. Forty-five observers with visual acuity of 20/20 or better were asked to make a forced-choice distinction between the image pair in regard to resolution. Each observer indicated which image of the pair appeared at a higher resolution. The results show that the mean resolution for 75% correct responses for each of the visual acuity groups increased from more than 30 cpd as visual acuity increased and reached a plateau at 40-50 cpd at -0.3 logMAR.