Machine vision recognition technology is used to replace the human eye and calliper inspection method during high speed operation simultaneously inspect and measure the wire rope defects. The integration of image processing, artificial intelligence and opto-electronics is used to transform the flaws data into digital signals and stored by the main control system. These features can be extracted by the algorithm to identify the various external defects of the wire rope accurately. Machine vision recognition technology has outstanding technical advantages in distinguishing and statistically analyse the number of broken wires on the surface of 6d/30d wire rope, measuring the change of wire rope joint and diameter. It overcomes the disadvantage of low efficiency and poor accuracy of manual inspection.