Single-pixel imaging can achieve high-dimensional imaging with only a single-pixel detector, in which the high-dimensional information is encoded into a one-dimensional detection sequence through time-varying structured patterns. Due to its extremely low requirement for detector’s resolution, single-pixel imaging has great research value in special waveband imaging, extremely low light imaging, and lidar detection. Compared with traditional intensity imaging, complex optical field imaging can not only obtain the change of light field intensity, but also obtain the phase information, therefore, it performs a great value in label-free microscopy imaging, surface measurement, crystal analysis and so on. Combining the advantages of both single-pixel imaging and complex optical imaging, single-pixel complex optical imaging has drawn widely attentions and can be applied in low-light microscopy imaging and measurement. Starting from the basic principles of single-pixel imaging and complex light field detection, the research status and some recent advances of single-pixel optical field imaging are reviewed, and the challenging problems as well as future research directions are also discussed.