Review and Prospect of Single-Shot Ultrafast Optical Imaging by Active Detection

In the recent decade, single-shot ultrafast optical imaging by active detection,called single-shot active ultrafast optical imaging (SS-AUOI) here, has made great progress, e.g., with a temporal resolution of 50 fs and a frame rate beyond 10 trillion frames per second. Now, it has become indispensable for charactering the nonrepeatable and difficult-to-reproduce events and revealing the underlying physical, chemical, and biological mechanisms. On the basis of this delightful status, we would like to make a review of SS-AUOI. On the basis of a brief introduction of SS-AUOI, our review starts with discussing its characteristics and then focuses on the survey and prospect of SS-AUOI technology.The art that appears on the front cover of this issue was created by the Ultrafast Science Editorial Office. The art is derived from Jia et al., “Broadband Diffractive Graphene Orbital Angular Momentum Metalens by Laser Nanoprinting,” featured in this issue. Figures incorporated on the cover are used with permission from the authors.