This paper consists of two parts: part I describes the working principle of a recently developed x-ray imaging crystal spectrometer, where the astigmatism of spherically bent crystals is being used with advantage to record spatially resolved spectra of highly charged ions for Doppler measurements of the ion-temperature and toroidal plasma-rotation-velocity profiles in tokamak plasmas. This type of spectrometer was thoroughly tested on NSTX and Alcator C-Mod, and its concept was recently adopted for the design of the ITER crystal spectrometers. Part II describes imaging schemes, where the astigmatism has been eliminated by the use of matched pairs of spherically bent crystals or reflectors. These imaging schemes are applicable over a wide range of the electromagnetic radiation, which includes microwaves, visible light, EUV radiation and x-rays. Potential applications with EUV radiation and x-rays are the diagnosis of laser-produced plasmas, imaging of biological samples with synchrotron radiation and lithography. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd.