Effects of point-spread function on calibration and radiometric accuracy of CCD camera

The point-spread function (PSF) of a camera can seriously affect the accuracy of radiometric calibration and measurement. We found that the PSF can produce a 3.7% difference between the apparent measured radiance of two plaques of different sizes with the same illumination. This difference can be removed by deconvolution with the measured PSF. To determine the PSF, many images of a collimated beam from a He-Ne laser are averaged. Since our optical system is focused at infinity, it should focus this source to a single pixel. Although the measured PSF is very sharp, dropping 4 and 6 orders of magnitude and 8 and 100 pixels away from the point source, respectively, we show that the effect of the PSF as far as 100 pixels away cannot be ignored without introducing an appreciable error to the calibration. We believe that the PSF should be taken into account in all optical systems to obtain accurate radiometric measurements.