Phase microscopy, especially quantitative phase microscopy (QPM), as a non-invasive and non-destructive tool for imaging phase objects, plays an important role for the structure analysis, identification and dynamic behavior analysis of the biological cells. According to the optical path characteristics of phase microscopy imaging recorded, the typical QPM techniques in both cases of on-axis and off-axis interference are analyzed comparatively, and their several important phase retrieval methods are introduced. In addition, the latest research progress of three-dimensional (3D) QPM is given simply. At last, the trend of QPM is predicted.