Molecular imprinting technology is a kind of technology that simulates the interaction between enzyme - substrate or antibody - antigen and synthesizes artificial receptors with specific recognition performance using target as template. In the early stage， the research objects were mostly small organic molecules including pesticides and veterinary drugs， and biological macromolecules including proteins. In recent years， researches have been extended to super-large "molecules" -cells， especially bacterial imprinting with a broad application prospect in the field of rapid detection of pathogenic bacteria. This paper introduces the principle of molecular imprinting technology， the selection of bacterial imprinting template and the preparation method of imprinted polymers. The application of molecular imprinting technology in the detection of pathogenic bacteria is summarized. Finally， the application prospect of molecular imprinting technology in the detection of pathogenic bacteria is discussed.