A high spatial and temporal resolution soft x-ray (SXR) imaging diagnostic has been installed in EAST for the study of magnetohydrodynamics activities and core high-Z impurity transport. Up to 122 lines of sight view the poloidal plasma from three directions (two up-down symmetrical horizontal arrays and one vertical array), which renders the diagnostic able to provide detailed tomographic reconstructions under various conditions. Fourier-Bessel method based on flux coordinates was employed for 2-D SXR tomographic reconstruction. Examples of several events measured by SXR diagnostic in EAST are shown, namely the crash patterns of sawtooth, periodical burst of edge localized modes, and the transport of high-Z intrinsic impurities.