Can a color or monochrome image sensor have a higher MTF?

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One might intuitively assume that a monochrome image sensor would have higher spatial resolution than a color sensor because there are 2-4x as many pixels sampling light projected on the focal plane as compared with a Bayer color sensor.

If you are working with a narrow-band light source, or you have bandpass filtered your light to a narrow band and your lens has been focused at the wavelength of your illumination or bandpass filter, this is true: your monochrome sensor will be sharper. This is bolstered by the narrow band light sources or bandpass filters often having a narrower range of frequencies than the filters in a color filter array.

However, if you are imaging under a broad-spectrum light source, the optical phenomenon of chromatic aberration, if present in your lens, can cause different wavelengths of light that are not as in focus (axial/longitudinal chromatic aberration), or spatially offset (lateral chromatic aberration) to be conflated with each other. In this case, the ability to demosaic/debayer the Bayer raw image and separate out the different color channels enables a color camera to potentially have higher MTF through:

There are other advantages to utilizing monochrome sensors, such as no color moire or fringing and higher quantum efficiency / SNR, but the number of cases where the monochrome sensor is sharper are limited.

See also: