Photos: Kodak's highly sensitive sensor

Eastman Kodak's high-sensitivity image sensor is a significant update to the traditional "Bayer" pattern that prevails in the vast majority of digital cameras. The Bayer pattern, named after Kodak inventor Bryce Bayer, has pixels sensitive to red, green and blue light. The brightness of the image at any given point is inferred from the green pixels, while the blue and red pixels add color information.

In the new sensor pattern, half of the pixels are "panchromatic"--sensitive to all light frequencies. These pixels supply brightness information at higher sensitivity, which is important because human vision relies more on brightness and color for discerning fine details. Meanwhile, the red, green and blue pixels supply color information. As with the Bayer pattern, software reconstructs a full-color image with red, green and blue contributions to each pixel.