Active 3D imaging based on white light scanning is a sort of efficient techniques which can digitize objects existed in physical world, and therefore to acquire 3D images of test targets. A light coding with a series of structured light patterns, for example, fringe patterns are usually applied for such a 3D imaging modality. A single optical 3D sensor based on fringe projection or 3D optical sensor network composed of multiple node sensors can be regarded as kinds of optical instruments that works on principle of computational imaging. In order to reconstruct a 3D image it is necessary to decode the fringe pattern to get the phase map that acts as special marks encoding each point of test object or scene, resulting in accurate determination of point correspondence. Once the homologous pairs identified precisely a 3D image can be obtained through a series of computations using a stereoscopic vision theory. This paper will briefly reviewed the working principle of an optical digitizer based on the strategy of phase-aided active imaging (PAAI) and that of 3D sensor network composed of multiple PAAI sensors. In addition, many potential applications in 3D body scanning, face scanning, and heritage digitizing will also be addressed in this paper to show great potentials of 3D optical digitizer based on the PAAI strategy and PAAI-based optical measurement network. Both academic research at the Shenzhen University and commercialized products developed at the Shenzhen ESUN Co. Ltd. with number of patented technologies will be presented.