Comparison of approaches and artefacts in the measurement of detector modulation transfer functions

In order to investigate the reproducibility of measurements of transmission electron microscope detector modulation transfer functions (MTFs) we measure the MTF of a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera using five different methods. MTFs derived from a sharp edge, a circular aperture and electron holographic interference fringes are found to agree closely with one other.

The difficulty of obtaining accurate measurements of MTFs and the potential of using focused electron probes to make direct measurements of MTFs is discussed. We highlight the sensitivity of image contrast after deconvolution to small differences in the measured MTF.