Abstract: Based on the application in the field of photogrammetry, this paper retrospects the binocular image dense matching method. First, the two categories of local dense image matching and global dense image matching methods are concisely compared, and the advantages, disadvantages, and main challenges of each method are pointed out. Then, the building occlusion problem that is difficult to deal with in dense matching is analyzed. The common building occlusion phenomenon in aerial photography is divided into five types, and the pertinence of the existing occlusion detection and filling algorithms is expounded, which provides technical ideas for solving the bottleneck problem in dense image matching. Finally, the development trend of dense image matching of binocular images is prospected. This paper can help readers fully understand the traditional binocular image dense matching technology, and it will be beneficial to the research of dense image matching based on deep learning.