Night vision imaging technology converts invisible radiation or enhances faint light at night under low illumination conditions to enable human eyes to see covertly at night. It plays an important role in modern military applications such as night detection and targeting, assisited driving, navigation and guidance. In order to ensure "one-way transparency" and give full play to the technical advantages of "dominating the night", the world's military powers have invested a lot of human and material resources to carry out research on advanced night vision imaging technology, so that the performance of night vision equipment can be rapidly developed. As the first article of this special issue of "Nanjing University of Science and Technology" for the Journal of Infrared and Laser Engineering, this paper outlines the current progress and challenges of night vision imaging technology, and provides a discussion and outlook of the future development trend of advanced night vision imaging technology——direct imaging based on photoelectric conversion and constructive imaging based on computational imaging, respectively.