Minimum Resolvable Contrast Testing of Short-wave IR Camera

Short-wave infrared (SWIR) cameras have several advantages over medium-wave infrared (MWIR) and long-wave infrared (LWIR) cameras. Hence, a method for evaluating their performance is crucial for the application and development of electro-optical systems. We suggest a method that can be used to evaluate the performance of an SWIR camera based on the minimum resolvable vontrast(MRC) test. An integrating sphere and five targets with different contrasts were used. The intensity of the radiation source, aliasing, and observation patterns were controlled to evaluate the SWIR camera performance. We applied this method to test the MRC of the SWIR system. Furthermore, a series of field experiments was conducted, and the results were in agreement with the MRC testing data. The uncertainty of the method reached 2.11%, which supports the conclusion that the MRC method can be applied to evaluate and predict the performance of SWIR cameras.