Inspired by recent work in compressive sensing, we propose a framework for the detection of stochastic signals from optimized projections. In order to generate a good projection matrix, we use dimensionality reduction techniques based on the maximization of the mutual information between the projected signals and their corresponding class labels. In addition, classification techniques based on support vector machines (SVMs) are applied for the final decision process. Simulation results show that the realizations of the stochastic process are detected with higher accuracy and lower complexity than a scheme performing signal reconstruction first, followed by detection based on the reconstructed signal.