Vision sensor systems and methods detect banding and flicker. The method includes receiving camera data and identifying a light source location in a frame of camera data and assigning a luminance measure at the light source as a signal reference. A region of interest (ROI) is then associated with the light source. The frame is incremented, and then a signal to noise ratio (SNR) at the light source is calculated. A number, N of frames may be processed to identify banding when it is present, and to identify flicker when it is present. Responsive to identifying banding or identifying flicker, a response for a display system or for a machine vision system is generated.