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The design of an optimal Mueller imaging polarimeter is not obvious: it necessitates the use of a well-conditioned polarization state generator as well as a well-conditioned polarization state analyser that permits proper inversion of intensity images to produce the Mueller matrix images. Even though a rigorous calibration procedure is applied, there remain uncertainties on measurements due to the non-ideal optical elements, misalignment, and photon noise in CCD cameras. The relationship between system conditioning and signal-to-noise ratio in an imaging polarimeter has been largely addressed in the recent literature. Herein, a different approach is used to study the error propagation and the impact of noise on the measurements in such a calibrated system quantitatively. The main contributions of this paper are: an extended theory of noise and errors, a development of the effect of noise resulting in a different …