If you go the features list for Acronis, one of the options is
Exclusive! Acronis® Recovery Manager™
Boot your computer to start the recovery process without boot media by selecting the F11 key, even if your operating system has failed.
I suspect that there would be a wizard of some sort to allow you to create an image, that is bootable to restore.
With Ghost this is possible too but you would still be using the Ghost wizard. In the wizard, you can create a bootable CD (or USB) and if the image is small enough, span it over multiple CDs, DVDs or USBs (other options include network etc)
Both the above I suspect would depend on your BIOS too and your hardware - whether your CDRom drivers were generic to boot etc
I would maybe advise downloading the trial for Acronis and trying it out?