A unified design strategy takes into account different subsystems within an overall electro-optic imaging system. In one implementation, the design methodology predicts end-to-end imaging performance using a spatial model for the source and models for the optical subsystem, the detector subsystem and the digital image processing subsystem. The optical subsystem and digital image processing subsystems are jointly designed taking into account the entire system. The intermediate image produced by the optical subsystem is not required to be high quality since, for example, the quality may be corrected by the digital image processing subsystem.