Fringe pattern analysis is an important content for optical measurement. The fringe pattern analysis have been researched for a long time, which have introduced the Fourier transform, the windowed Fourier transform, the wavelet transform, the S transform, the recent variable mode decomposition and empirical mode decomposition (EMD) and etc. Compared with other methods, EMD has strong abilities being adaptive and suitable for complex signals, so it gets more attentions in recent years. In this paper, combined with the key contents of fringe pattern analysis, the EMD algorithms and their applications in fringe pattern processing were reviewed. The remaining key issues and technical difficulties were concluded, which were expected to provide some reference for future researches in relevant fields.