The spectral imaging system on chip has many advantages, such as compact structure, light weight and portability. It can be flexibly mounted on unmanned aerial vehicle and cubic star platform, showing broad application prospects. This paper reviews the research progress and applications of spectral imaging system on chip in recent years, also summarizes the spectrum achieving principle and integration mode of chip-scale spectral imaging system. In addition, some key applications of spectral imaging system on chip in biomedical, environmental monitoring, military equipment, intelligent consumer electronics and other fields are shown in the paper. This paper reveals that the on-chip spectral imaging system is currently facing challenges and development direction in the future.