Abstract: The first image segmentation method based on the determination of transition region proposed a quarter of a century ago has attracted many attentions from the community of image techniques. Till now, a lot of applications have been reported, and further researches have been conducted and some research results have been obtained. This paper uses Google Scholar as a tool for searching related literatures, and makes a complete review of progress for this method on the basis of the search results. This includes the yearly counts of citing articles, the classification and analysis of further research articles, the discussions on appearing problems, and the potential directions for further researches. From it, not only the information for the developments, basic principle, related areas and existing problems of the method are presented, but also the tendency for further research tasks is provided.