A proposed figure of merit for digital night vision devices

The authors propose a digital sensor figure of merit (FOM) to describe the performance of digital night vision sensors operating in low-light conditions with a single-number parameter in a manner directly comparative to the FOM of analog image intensifier tubes (IIT). Currently, this first iteration single-valued digital sensor FOM is the product of measured sensor limiting resolution and sensor signal-to-noise ratio using alternative but equivalent techniques to IIT FOM measurements.