Abstract:Addressing the issue that traditional infrared thermal imaging only acquires intensity information and fails to meet the growing demand for detecting multidimensional target information such as spectrum and polarization, this paper reviews the research progress in multi-dimensional integrated imaging of thermal radiation. It focuses on analyzing the methods and potential for achieving compact and integrated multidimensional information acquisition based on nanophotonics and metasurface technologies. The review elaborates on the limitations of traditional infrared imaging and the separate development history of spectral and polarimetric imaging. It outlines the technical approaches for multidimensional detection based on combinations of discrete components and their inherent challenges regarding volume, cost, and real-time capability. Furthermore, it presents the strategies employing nanostructures and metasurfaces for the parallel manipulation of multidimensional light field parameters at the subwavelength scale, and discusses the principles thereby enabling system miniaturization, lightweight design, and functional integration. Finally, the paper summarizes the core advantages of metasurface-based integrated approaches compared to traditional discrete solutions, and points out the challenges they face regarding broadband high-efficiency operation, large field-of-view performance, fabrication and manufacturing, design complexity, and detector integration.