The invention provides an image acquisition apparatus, a terminal and an image acquisition method. The image acquisition apparatus comprises a prism arranged at a side surface of a screen and used for refracting and reflecting light reflected or emitted by a detection object on the upper surface of the screen to form a projection image on a photosensing device, and the photosensing device arranged below the prism and used for receiving the projection image from the prism for processing the projection image. According to the technical solution, the problem that external space of a screen of an apparatus is occupied because of application of an image acquisition apparatus, such as a fingerprint reader; various kinds of image acquisition work can be done conveniently and the production cost is reduced.