The geostationary satellite-borne differential optical absorption spectrometer detects the atmosphere by whiskbroom imaging. Aiming at the requirements of signal-to-noise ratio bigger than 1 000 and the spectrometer's detection period of less than 10 min in high-speed detection mode and less than 1 h in high-resolution mode, the CCD imaging system was designed. Selecting CCD47-20 as the detector, the imaging circuit was designed to realize the sample and upload of image signal. The effects of frame co-added and binning on the time and spatial resolution were analyzed. Combined with the characteristics of the frame transfer CCD, the imaging method of swinging the mirror when reading the last frame of each position was designed, and the number of frame co-added and binning were set reasonably to achieve the purpose of optimizing the imaging cycle. Under 1s exposure time, the detection period is 515 s in high-speed mode and 3 315 s in high-resolution mode, and the signal-to-noise ratio is greater than 1 000 in both two modes. In the pollutant observation experiment, there is no missing frames or duplication occurred. The CCD imaging system meets the detection requirements of the geostationary spaceborne differential optical absorption spectrometer, and provides a technical reference for the design of a spectrometer imaging system eventually applied to a geostationary satellite.