Chemical imaging (CI) integrates conventional imaging and spectroscopy to attain both spectral and spatial components and structural information from an object simultaneously. Vibrational spectroscopic methods, such as infrared and Raman spectroscopy, combined with imaging are particularly useful. In recent years, CI has found important application in the field of forensic science due to its advantage of highly sensitive, rapid, non-destructive features and it can provide qualitative and quantitative information about specimen at one time. There are many methods for detection and enhancement of latent fingerprints. CI is an emerging platform technology with great potential to visualize latent fingerprints on many objects without any pre-treatment. CI can enhance the quality of the fingerprints developed by conventional methods, then form larger contrast with the background. With the advancement of instruments, the application of CI in the field of fingerprint detection will be more widely used. This paper provides an overview of the principal and classification of CI instrumentation, and reviews the application of CI to detection and enhancement of latent fingerprints. Finally, the direction of CI technology development is viewed.