It has now become a tradition for every topical meeting on digital holography (DH) to be succeeded by a feature issue in Applied Optics (AO). The last feature issue was jointly published by Applied Optics and the Journal of the Optical Society of America B. In 2017, AO and the Journal of the Optical Society of America A (JOSA A) join to host the feature. The topical meeting was stand-alone and had great success, with 62 oral presentations along with 21 invited talks, 3 tutorials, 2 keynote addresses, and 64 posters, for a grand total of 134.

The DH Topical Meeting is now recognized as the world’s premier forum for science, technology, and applications of digital holography, and 3D imaging and display methods. In 2017, the meeting was organized around 16 sessions, including a poster session and a post-deadline session. 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 33 are being published in AO and 9 in JOSA A. Three of the papers in AO 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 under way and stimulate further novel applications of digital holography and 3D imaging. 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 OSA Imaging and Applied Optics Congress taking place 25–28 June 2018, in Orlando, Florida.