Which combination of image characteristics is measured by a sensitometric strip?

• A. 1 and 2
• B. 1 and 3
• C. 1, 2 and 3
• D. 2 and 3

Answer: (C)

A sensitometric strip is used to characterize how a film–screen system responds to exposure by producing a range of known exposures on one film and measuring the resulting densities. From that data, you can derive the main response parameters: speed (how much exposure is needed to reach a specified density), contrast (the slope of the density vs exposure curve, or gamma), and exposure latitude (the usable range of exposures that still produces diagnostically acceptable densities). Since this test explicitly maps exposure to density across a spectrum, it assesses all three image characteristics together. Other tests focus on different aspects like sharpness or noise, which aren’t what a sensitometric strip is designed to measure.