Abstract: Single-pixel imaging achieves 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 minimum 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 the traditional intensity imaging, the complex optical field imaging can obtain the phase information, therefore, performs a great value in label-free microscopy imaging, surface measurement, and crystal analysis. Combining with 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, we will review the basic principles of single-pixel imaging and complex optical field imaging, introduce some recent advances of single-pixel optical field imaging, the challenging problems as well as future research directions will also be discussed.