Perception-based halo visibility model for mini-LED backlit LCDs

Mini-LED local-dimming LCDs provide high-dynamic-range (HDR) performance, yet still exhibit pronounced halo effect around bright objects against dark backgrounds, limiting further improvements in display quality. Because halo luminance is typically 2-5 orders of magnitude lower than that of the bright display region and is easily contaminated by lens stray light and eye glare, accurate quantification of halo visibility remains challenging. In this work, we propose a halo visibility model grounded in the human visual system (HVS) by combining measured halo luminance distributions with subjective evaluation. A measurement method is, to the best of our knowledge, first used to obtain two-dimensional halo luminance distributions, from which a perceptual halo-boundary model is then established to determine the perceptual halo area. Based on this, a halo visibility index (HVI) is defined as a logarithmic integration of the perceived contrast over the perceptual halo area in the field-of-view (FOV) domain. Experimental results show a strong correlation between HVI and subjective scores (R² = 0.96). The effects of native contrast ratio (CR), backlight units (BLU) count, and viewing distance on HVI are further quantified. The proposed method provides a perception-consistent objective basis for halo suppression and standardized evaluation of mini-LED backlit LCDs.