A beam of light stimulates the retina weakly when its entry to the pupil is gradually shifted from the centre toward the edge. For single pupil entrance point the light, irrespective of its coherence would still show the Stiles-Crawford effect with diminished visibility toward the edge of the pupil. Only when coherent light is incident from opposing points in the pupil can the effect be cancelled. This paper has attempted a theoretical computation of how the contrast in an interference pattern formed on the retina controls the retina’s response in three ways; first, by completely disregarding the Stiles Crawford diminution of effective brightness for unit contrast; next, taking the traditional SCE route for zero contrast, and finally enhancing the diminution in the effective brightness by giving an opposing boost to the visibility in commensurate with a contrast intermediate between the two extremes of unity and zero.

Date Published: 15 June 2015
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 9654, International Conference on Optics and Photonics 2015, 965428 (15 June 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2181663

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9654:
International Conference on Optics and Photonics 2015
Kallol Bhattacharya, Editor(s)