Abstract: Atractylodes macrocephala, a plant of the Asteraceae family, as a commonly used traditional Chinses medicine in clinic, has the efficacy of invigorating spleen and supplementing qi, eliminating dampness and inducing diuresis, and expelling wind and dispersing cold. Moreover, it was proved that it has many pharmacological effects such as anti-inflammation, anti-tumor, and improving immunical ability based on the scientific researches. Atractyloside is one of its active ingredients and characteristic ingredients. In this paper, using the search terms of Baizhu lactone, sesquiterpene lactone, quality evaluation, quality control, and chemical composition, the CNKI, Weipu and PubMed literature database were searched. And relevant literature results were compared and summarized. The catagories, structural formula of atractyloside and their transformation mechanism were summarized. It was found that the content of lactone components could be affected by different processing methods, different producing locations, different harvesting season, and different growth years. It was found that for the quality evaluation of Atractylodes macrocephala, the multivariate statistical analysis combined with content determination or fingerprint establishment could be more accurate, reliable and comprehensive, among which the supervised PLS-DA with OPLS-DA analysis was better than the unsupervised PCA analysis. This literature summary could provide a beneficial reference for the quality evaluation and utilization of Atractylodes macrocephala.