Polarization imaging is a new way for photoelectric detection, which provides more one-dimensional information than conventional imaging systems. It has important application in the fields of industrial detection, biomedicine, earth remote sensing, modern military, aerospace and ocean. The typical applications, development history and status of polarization imaging were firstly analyzed and summarized. Then, the current methods of polarization imaging were reviewed. The latest research of polarization characteristics, transmission property, polarization imaging sensors, nonuniformity correction for division-of-focal-plane polarimeters, super resolution restoration for polarization image, and polarization information fusion approaches were introduced. Moreover, the future development direction of polarization imaging was prospected, which including focal plane polarization detector with high extinction ratio, division-of-focal-plane multispectral polarization detector, non-uniformity correction method with high precision, polarization image super resolution restoration method, and polarization information fusion(intensity image, degree of polarization and angle of polarization) so on.