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When diabetes is diagnosed, the majority of insulin-secreting pancreatic beta cells are already dysfunctional or destroyed. This beta cell dysfunction/destruction usually takes place over many years, making timely detection and clinical intervention difficult. For this reason, there is immense interest in developing tools to bioimage beta cell mass and/or function noninvasively to facilitate early diagnosis of diabetes as well as to assist the development of novel antidiabetic therapies. Recent years have brought significant progress in beta cell imaging that is now inching towards clinical applicability. We explore here the need to bioimage human beta cells noninvasively in various types of diabetes, and we discuss current and emerging tools for bioimaging beta cells. Further developments in this field are expected to facilitate beta cell imaging in diabetes.