With the development of platforms and sensors, continuous repetition of remote sensing observation of the earth surface has been realized, and a mass of multi-source, multi-scale, multi-resolution remote sensing data has been accumulated. Those images have detailedly recorded the changing process of ground objects on the earth, which makes the long term global change research, such as change detection, based on remote sensing become possible, and greatly push forward the research on image processing and application. Although plenty of successful research has been reported, there are still enormous challenges in multi-temporal imagery change detection. A relatively complete mature theoretical system has not formed, and there is still a lack of systematic summary of research progress. Firstly, the current progress in change detection methods using multi-temporal remotely sensed imagery has been reviewed in this paper. Then, the methods are classified into three categories and summarized according to the type and amount of the input data, single-phase post-classification comparison, two-phase comparison, and time series analysis. After that, the possible existing problems in the current development of multi-temporal change detection are analyzed, and the development trend is discussed finally.