The brain tumor segmentation is one of the highly focused regions in the community of medical science. Brain tumor segmentation has been employed to define the tumor area to help for disease diagnosis and select the best methods for the treatment of diseases. It is a tool to separate a portion of the tumor from the entire image. This paper presents a thorough literature review of recent techniques of brain tumor segmentation. Several techniques of image segmentation are briefly explained with the recent contribution of various researchers.The brain tumor is a mass of abnormal cells. It consists of two types: malignant and benign. Brain tumor symptoms can be general or pre-defined. General symptoms are caused by tumor pressure on the brain or spinal cord. Pre-defined symptoms are caused, when a certain part of the brain does not function well due to a tumor. The researchers applied different imaging modalities to detect anatomical structures from several medical imaging systems