Does an LCD monitor use emitted light to form an image?

Answer 1

Yes and no.

Here is the "no" part of it:

LCDs have three tiny liquid crystals for each pixel of the image. One is used for red, one for green and the other for blue parts of the image. The crystals change character when a voltage is applied and using polarising filters they block or pass light through them. The crystals themselves do not emit light.

And for the "yes" part:

The image that we see is created by lights behind the sheet of liquid crystals. When a crystal passes light, we see it glowing. Obviously, the whole system uses emitted light from the back lighting in order to work but the light source is distinct from the image generation.

The back light has been fluorescent lighting but in 2010 there are now many models using LED illumination. The LEDs are only used to produce the light source and do not take part in the creation of the image details. LED illumination is allowing screens to be come even slimmer than other LCD displays. They are often referred to as LED televisions but the description is not entirely accurate.

There is a new generation of LED television now available. These use LEDs to create the image by emitting red, green and blue light from each LED. Because there is no additional back light source, an LED television does use directly emitted light.