File:Definitions PSF OTF MTF PhTF.svg

English: Various closely related characterizations of an optical system exhibiting coma, a typical aberration that occurs off-axis. (a) The point-spread function (PSF) is the image of a point source. (b) The image of a line is referred to as the line-spread function, in this case a vertical line. The line-spread function is directly proportional to the vertical integration of the point-spread image. The optical-transfer function (OTF) is defined as the Fourier transform of the point-spread function and is thus generally a two-dimensional complex function. Typically only a one-dimensional slice is shown (c), corresponding to the Fourier transform of the line-spread function. The thick green line indicates the real part of the function, and the thin red line the imaginary part. Often only the absolute value of the complex function is shown, this allows visualization of the two-dimensional function (d); however, more commonly only the one-dimensional function is shown (e). The latter is typically normalized at the spatial frequency zero and referred to as the modulation transfer function (MTF). For completeness, the complex argument is sometimes provided as the phase transfer function (PhTF), shown in panel (f).