A recent breakthrough in information theory known as compressive sensing is one component of an ongoing revolution in data acquisition and processing that guides one to acquire less data yet still recover the same amount of information as traditional techniques, meaning less resources such as time, detector cost, or power are required. Starting from these basic principles, this thesis explores the application of these techniques to imaging. The first laboratory example we introduce is a simple infrared camera. Then we discuss the application of compressive sensing techniques to hyperspectral microscopy, specifically Raman microscopy, which should prove to be a powerful technique to bring the acquisition time for such microscopies down from hours to minutes. Next we explore a novel sensing architecture that uses partial circulant matrices as sensing matrices, which results in a simplified, more robust imaging system. The results of these imaging experiments lead to questions about the performance and fundamental nature of sparse signal recovery with partial circulant compressive sensing matrices. Thus, we present the results of a suite of numerical experiments that show some surprising and suggestive results that could stimulate further theoretical and applied research of partial circulant compressive sensing matrices. We conclude with a look ahead to adaptive sensing procedures that allow real-time, interactive optical signal processing to further reduce the resource demands of an imaging system.