A method for reducing the noise equivalent temperature difference associated with imaging devices having a detection array including micro-cantilevers and a charged-coupled device or a complementary metal oxide semiconductor imager is presented. The method includes calculating horizontal and vertical pixel ratios based upon the number of receptor pixels and micro-cantilever pixels, defining composite pseudo-pixels comprised of at least two receptor pixels, capturing at least one frame of an image, calculating the composite intensity for each composite pseudo-pixel based on the intensities of the receptor pixels therein, and reconstructing each frame so that receptor pixels within each composite pseudo-pixel are displayed with the appropriate composite intensity. While the present method lowers pixel resolution, the composite pseudo-pixels maintain image resolution within the reconstructed image.