High-contrast adaptive optics imaging is a powerful technique to probe the architectures of planetary systems from the outside-in and survey the atmospheres of self-luminous giant planets . Direct imaging has rapidly matured over the past decade and especially the last few years with the advent of high-order adaptive optics systems , dedicated planet-finding instruments with specialized coronagraphs , and innovative observing and post-processing strategies to suppress speckle noise . This review summarizes recent progress in high-contrast imaging with particular emphasis on observational results , discoveries near and below the deuterium-burning limit , and a practical overview of large-scale surveys and dedicated instruments . I conclude with a statistical meta-analysis of deep imaging surveys in the literature . Based on observations of 384 unique and single young ( \approx 5–300 Myr ) stars spanning stellar masses between 0.1–3.0 M _ { \odot } , the overall occurrence rate of 5–13 M _ { \mathrm { Jup } } companions at orbital distances of 30–300 AU is 0.6 ^ { +0.7 } _ { -0.5 } % assuming hot-start evolutionary models . The most massive giant planets regularly accessible to direct imaging are about as rare as hot Jupiters are around Sun-like stars . Dividing this sample into individual stellar mass bins does not reveal any statistically-significant trend in planet frequency with host mass : giant planets are found around 2.8 ^ { +3.7 } _ { -2.3 } % of BA stars , < 4.1 % of FGK stars , and < 3.9 % of M dwarfs . Looking forward , extreme adaptive optics systems and the next generation of ground- and space-based telescopes with smaller inner working angles and deeper detection limits will increase the pace of discovery to ultimately map the demographics , composition , evolution , and origin of planets spanning a broad range of masses and ages .