Examining someone with colored plates, like the Ishihara system, is useful
for detecting absence of color vision but subjective studies like these can
not be quantified or calibrated.
There are a variety of systems for recording electrical responses in the
brain to stimulation of the retina. These are used for things like checking
visual acuty in infants or children, testing different areas of the retina
for responsiveness to light and color, and for grossly evaluating electrical
transmission through the visual system for signs of diseases in the brain
like multiple sclerosis.
Theoretically selective retinal stimulation could be combined with computer
averaged occipital cortical responses to develop a system to quantify more
absolutely cortical response to color, contrast, saturation, etc. For all I
know someone is working on such a system or using it to perform clinical
studies right now because the devices that could be adapted to this use are
readily available in the marketplace.
Theoretically such a system could be used so that at a given point in time
and under the circumstances of the study the individual would know that a
particular reference color of a particular intensity shone on a particular
part of the retina evokes a particular cortical response but I am not sure
how this would translate into color managed printing.
I am not sure how this would apply to color printing because perception and
aesthetics are not the same as cortical electrical responses. Fortunately we
still live in a world where such attributes of being human must still be
considered as epiphenomena. This will change . . .
