A system for detecting newton ring mura on a display includes sensing an image of the display with an image capture device and determining a border boundary of an illuminated portion of the display. The image is spatially filtered as defined by the border boundary using a filter that reduces sensor noise and a grid pattern of the display. The spatially filtered image is processed to determine if a region proximate a pixel location is a potential newton ring mura defect and characterizing the potential newton ring mura defects to remove at least one of the potential newton ring mura defects.