Abstract: A system and method for digitizing data from an imaging system includes sampling a signal from an optical detector with a first circuit having a first attenuation and with a second circuit having a second attenuation different than the first attenuation. The system and method further includes digitizing the sampled signal at a predetermined number of bits desired for an analog to digital conversion of the sampled signal by allocating a first portion of bits to digitizing a signal from the first circuit and allocating a second portion of bits to digitizing a signal from the second circuit. The system and method further includes encoding the first and second portion of bits into one monotonic digital word corresponding to a range of the sampled signal.