Sperm must be capacitated before sperm-ovum fusion. Capacitation was once considered as hyperactivation. But now many investigators thought that capacitation wasn't equal to hyperactivation, and that sperm hyperactivation might be a moiety of capacitation or the result of capacitation. In the present, the methods used to study sperm capacitation include fertilization in vitro, induction of sperm acrosome reaction, FITC-labeled chlortetracycline and plant hemoagglutinin. The studies on sperm capacitation in vitro mainly focused on the inductive substances of sperm capacitation and subsequent results analysis. It could lay foundation for the manifestation of molecular mechanism of sperm capacitation and destination of sperm capacitation in molecular levels.