Because of the complexity of the surface reconstruction, reverse engineering fields there are many issues to be studied, including the reconstruction and surface-visual technology, surface modeling methods, feature detection.

Application research status quo
As an important component of the advanced manufacturing technology, the application research of reverse engineering has become a hot one attention at home and abroad.

Reverse engineering is widely used in products imitation or modified design. Siemens electrical panel through the reverse engineering of the turbine blades reverse design, and optimize the design, in less than 12 days time to develop working for other aspects of the new turbine, the system has begun to offer reverse engineering Apps. The use of optical scanners to pump impeller for data collection, designed by reverse the pump impeller three-dimensional modeling. In addition, modified the design of the car Chery and GM are, without exception, the application of the reverse engineering.

In the rehabilitation of dilapidated parts of the design, in 2000, the Boeing Company of reverse engineering of the Boeing 747's tail was designed to recover, and in one working day has manufactured parts for older aircraft maintenance and replacement parts provide a fast way.

Reverse engineering has also a better application in product testing and error analysis. In the early 1990s, NASA launched a major research on the application of reverse engineering, which was to study X-38 aircraft with the CAD design model match between the precision and error, to analysis and verification CFD (computational fluid dynamics) the accuracy of the simulation. Recently, with the non-contact optical scanners and CAI technology AMT Company improves the speed of inspection parts. CAI scan data input software and CAD design model for comparison and analysis of errors and automatically generate the inspection reports. Before, AMT need to test parts of a half-day set-up and run a few hours now just a half-hour set, the actual testing can be as long as a few minutes.

In the field of medical applications, the use of CT tomography technology for obtaining two-dimensional images, through a dedicated software for image processing and model reconstruction. The digital model of human femur, customized for the artificial joint-replacement. Some people at home and abroad to reverse engineering for the design of corrective braces, teeth through the plaster model of scanning and three-dimensional reconstruction, the teeth were three-dimensional digital model. Then, review and correct based on the model, creating a series of corrective braces. At present, the technology has been commercially available in foreign countries. Shanghai Traffic University in China has developed based on the rapid braces reverse engineering design and manufacturing system, and began preliminary application.

In general, foreign in reverse engineering research and application of an earlier start: domestic reverse engineering applications mainly concentrated in parts of the complex surface development and mold design. In the automotive, aerospace, toys, and a comprehensive range of industrial applications.