The Effects of LCD Backlight Strobing on Static and Moving Target Detection

Relative to CRT displays and other display technologies, moving objects appear to be blurred on LCDs because motion is represented as a series of rapidly updated images. The eye moves over these static images when tracking simulated moving objects, which results in perceived motion blur. Backlight strobing (the rapid and imperceptible flashing of an LCD’s backlight) mitigates the effects of motion blur. This improvement in image quality was framed in the context of visual perception theory. The current experiment examined the effects of backlight strobing on target detection in a visual search task that was either easy or hard, for moving (blurred) and static (non-blurred) search grids. Backlight strobing improved target detection for moving search grids, particularly for hard search tasks. However, backlight strobing impaired target detection for static search grids.