A detector records photons in total

PHYSICS · Subjective · Fermi University Physics · Optics & Photonics · Fourier optics and image formation · Fourier optics and image formation

What an Instrument Can See, Ch The transfer function of an imaging system

Problem

A detector records

N = 8000

photons in total, from the several pixels that together sample one period of a sinusoidal test pattern of object modulation

m = 0.80

. At the spatial frequency of the pattern the system transfers contrast at

\mathcal{H} = 0.040

. (a) Compute the signal-to-noise ratio of the detected sinusoid, using the shot-noise result

\mathrm{SNR} = m\mathcal{H}\sqrt{N/2}