Abstract: Food safety hinges on effective detection technology. Traditional methods, while somewhat destructive, also prove time-consuming, inefficient, cumbersome, and subjective. Hence, it is of great significance to explore non-destructive, swift and efficient detection technology for ensuring food safety and quality assessment. Multispectral imaging (MSI), an emerging non-destructive detection technology, features rapidity, non-destructiveness, and objectivity. It introduces a new method for expeditious and non-destructive detection in the food industry. This paper introduces the principles, advantages and disadvantages, and data analysis method of MSI technology and conducts a review of related research on the application of MSI technology at home and abroad in the fields of fruit quality assessment, vegetable grading, meat adulteration and aquatic product spoilage detection. In the end, the paper makes a summary and future outlook on the development of MSI technology in the non-destructive detection of internal and external food quality.