Abstract-Scientific researches are always accompanied with a large number of complex data. Thus, it is important to view and analysis these data or objects in a much more efficient way. Viewpoint selection can improve both the speed of rendering and the efficiency of data understanding, became a hot topic in research, and is applied to various research areas. Viewpoint selection considerably influences the amount of information contained in the projected images, has been extensively studied in many areas such as: volume rendering, image-based modeling, object recognition, etc. most of the studies utilizing the information theoretical framework. This paper reviews the relevant literatures on this topic by summarizing the development and application of the technology, and put forward some ideas for future development.