Abstract: In a measurement instrument, a display processor system and method for efficiently building a display image on a bit-mapped liquid crystal display are provided. The display processor system contains a set of bit plane images corresponding to predetermined images such as figures, menus, axes for a graphical plot, and other commonly needed images. Because the bit plane images are already processed and defined, operating on the display image becomes a simplified, high-level operation in which the desired image is constructed according to a display operation sequence. Virtual trace bit plane images are also employed to accommodate incoming measurement values which are appended to measurement traces, thereby causing the measurement traces to change rapidly. Virtual bit planes skip the intermediate step of constructing an entire bit plane image so that the displayed image may be more rapidly updated with the changing measurement traces.