3D reconstruction plays an increasingly important role in modern photogrammetric systems. Conventional satellite or aerial-based remote sensing (RS) platforms can provide the necessary data sources for the 3D reconstruction of large-scale landforms and cities. Even with low-altitude UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), 3D reconstruction in complicated situations, such as urban canyons and indoor scenes, is challenging due to frequent tracking failures between camera frames and high data collection costs. Recently, spherical images have been extensively used due to the capability of recording surrounding environments from one camera exposure. In contrast to perspective images with limited FOV (Field of View), spherical images can cover the whole scene with full horizontal and vertical FOV and facilitate camera tracking and data acquisition in these complex scenes. With the rapid evolution and extensive use of professional and consumer-grade spherical cameras, spherical images show great potential for the 3D modeling of urban and indoor scenes. Classical 3D reconstruction pipelines, however, cannot be directly used for spherical images. Besides, there exist few software packages that are designed for the 3D reconstruction of spherical images. As a result, this research provides a thorough survey of the state-of-the-art for 3D reconstruction of spherical images in terms of data acquisition, feature detection and matching, image orientation, and dense matching as well as presenting promising applications and discussing potential prospects. We anticipate that this study offers insightful clues to direct future research.

翻译：三维重建在现代摄影测量系统中扮演着日益重要的角色。传统的卫星或航空遥感平台可为大规模地貌及城市的三维重建提供必要的数据源。即便使用低空无人机，在城市峡谷及室内场景等复杂环境下进行三维重建仍面临挑战，这主要源于相机帧间频繁的跟踪失败以及高昂的数据采集成本。近年来，球面图像因能通过单次相机曝光记录周围环境而得到广泛应用。与视场受限的透视图像不同，球面图像具有全景水平与垂直视场，可覆盖完整场景，从而有助于在这些复杂场景中的相机跟踪与数据采集。随着专业级及消费级球面相机的快速演进与广泛使用，球面图像在城市及室内场景三维建模中展现出巨大潜力。然而，经典的二维图像三维重建流程无法直接应用于球面图像。此外，针对球面图像三维重建的专用软件包也较为稀少。为此，本研究从数据采集、特征检测与匹配、影像定向及密集匹配等方面，对球面图像三维重建的最新研究进展进行了系统综述，同时介绍了具有前景的应用案例并探讨了未来发展方向。我们期望本研究能为未来相关研究提供富有洞察力的参考。