In accordance with the present approach, a dark current is measured for one or more detector elements and used to determine a gain or gain compensation for the respective detector elements. In certain embodiments, the dark current is used to determine a temperature for the respective detector element and the temperature is used to determine the gain or gain compensation. In other embodiments, the dark current is used to calculate the gain or gain compensation for the respective detector element without calculating an intermediate temperature value, such as via the use of a transfer function.