Abstract: Reading text in natural scene is fundamental to computer vision and intelligent information processing. In this way, text detection is a major part of recognizing text and thus has become very popular topic in recent years. In this paper, we first introduce the object, methods, and challenges of text detection. We then review some classic algorithms on text detection, and introduce two deep learning based algorithms that represent the trends of text detection research. Moreover, we summary typical text detection datasets available, as well as the results of representative algorithms on these datasets. Finally, we conclude the current researches on text detection and the challenges we face, and point out some prospective directions of text detection.