Using carbon nanotubes (CNT),high performance infrared detectors have been developed.Since the carbon nanotubes have extraordinary optoelectronics properties due to its unique one dimensional geometry and structure,the CNT based infrared detectors have extremely low dark current,low noise equivalent temperature difference (NETD),high response time,and high dynamic range.However,there are two major difficulties that impede the application of CNT based IR detectors for imaging systems.First,the small diameter of the carbon nanotubes results in low fill factor.Secondly,it is difficult to fabricate large scale of the detector array for high resolution focal plane due to the limitations on the efficiency and cost of the manufacturing.In this paper,a new CNT based IR imaging system will be presented.Integrating the CNT detectors with photonic crystal wave guide,the fill factor of the CNT based IR sensor can be improved significantly.Furthermore,using the compressive sensing technology,a high resolution imaging can be achieved by CNT based IR detectors.The experimental testing results show that the new imaging system can achieve the superb performance enabled by CNT based IR based detectors,and,at same time,overcame its difficulties to achieve high resolution and efficient imaging.