MTF Bench · Nyquist & Deconvolution

What oversampling actually buys you — and what deconvolution charges for it

A Gaussian seeing/optics blur crushes high spatial frequencies. Noise doesn't fall off — it's flat across frequency. Deconvolution scales both back up by 1/MTF, so the frequencies you "gain" by sampling finer come back as noise. Drive the sampling and watch the Nyquist line walk into the dead zone.

1.6 — the rule 2.0 3.3 — "classic"

Modulation transfer & the inverse filter

Blue: how much of each frequency survives the blur. Amber: the gain deconvolution must apply to undo it (1/MTF) — which is exactly the noise amplification at that frequency.

MTF (signal surviving) 1/MTF (noise gain) your Nyquist (s/2) dead zone (MTF<10%)

The same faint region, before & after inverse filtering

A dim background at your target SNR, blurred and sampled, then naively deconvolved to Nyquist. The signal is "restored" — and so is a much bigger pile of noise.

true scene recorded (blurred + noise) deconvolved