It has now become a tradition that every topical meeting on digital holography (DH) is succeeded by a subsequent feature issue in Applied Optics. In 2018, as in 2017, the issue is offered jointly between AO and the Journal of the Optical Society of America A (JOSA A). The topical meeting was a part of the OSA Imaging and Applied Optics Congress and was a great success with seventy-two oral presentations along with thirteen invited talks, two tutorials, one keynote address and fifty-two posters, adding up to a grand total of 140.

The DH Topical Meeting is now recognized as the world’s premier forum for science, technology, and applications of the digital holography, 3D imaging, and display methods. In 2018, the meeting was organized around sixteen sessions including three poster and a post deadline sessions. Sessions addressed hot topics related to the areas of interferometry, phase microscopy, novel holographic processes, 3-D and novel displays, integral imaging, computer generated holograms, compressive holography, full-field tomography, and holography with various light sources including coherent to incoherent and X-ray to terahertz waves. Accordingly, this feature issue has a lot of excellent contributions, of which thirty-eight are published in AO and nine in JOSA A. One paper in AO and three in JOSA A are invited papers.

All submitted papers, including invited papers, have undergone peer review. We hope these articles will present state-of-the-art technological developments that are currently underway and stimulate further novel applications of digital holography and 3D imaging. Then, the Topical Editors would like to thank all the contributors and the reviewers without whom this feature issue would not have been possible. Finally, we wish the very best of success in the upcoming Digital Holography and 3D Imaging Conference, which will be held May 19–23, 2018, in Bordeaux, France.