World's first full-colour image sensor? (Design News).(Brief Article)

You may want to wait before shelling out on that expensive digital camera, thanks to the development of a new image sensor that could both lower cost and improve performance.

The CCD and CMOS sensors in most digital cameras contain just one layer of monochromatic photo detectors, with one photo detector per pixel. To capture colour, the pixels in the image sensor are organised in a mosaic pattern. As a result, each pixel captures just one colour: red, green or blue. The camera must then mathematically estimate the remaining two colours not detected; limiting the range and accuracy of the colour captured.

However, each light-sensitive cell in Foveon's new X3 …