Cell is the basic unit and functional unit of living body. The study of the internal structure and function of living cells is one of the foundations of mastering the essence of life. Therefore, the real-time observation of living cells is of great significance for the development of life sciences. Conventional optical microscopy is limited by the diffraction limits and can not observe the details of biological structures below 200 nm. In the past 20 years, with the rapid development of super-diffraction limit optical theory, technology, devices and fluorescent probes, super-resolution microscopy has become an important method for life science research. However, most super-resolution microscopic methods or measurements take a long time, or are likely to cause photobleaching/phototoxicity, and are severely limited in living cell studies. In this paper, based on the study of fast super-resolution microscopy, the photoactivated localization microscopy and stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy were introduced based on single molecule localization microscopy. The stimulated emission depletion microscopy based on fluorescence non-linear saturated light conversion and structured illumination microscopy based on structured light illumination was also introduced. Besides, the development and application of cell imaging were explored. Finally, an outlook of the future development trend of super-resolution microscopy in living cell imaging was provided.