Compared with conventional cameras, spectral imagers provide many more features in the spectral do-main. They have been used in various fields such as material identifi cation, remote sensing, precision agriculture, and surveillance. Traditional imaging spectrometers use generally scanning systems. They cannot meet the demands of dynamic scenarios. This limits the practical applications for spectral imaging. Recently, with the rapid development in computational photography theory and semiconductor techniques, spectral video acquisition has become feasible. This paper aims to offer a review of the state-of-the-art spectral imaging technologies, especially those capable of capturing spectral videos. Finally, we evaluate the performances of the existing spectral acquisition systems and discuss the trends for future work.