An infrared target location method based on a saliency map is proposed. That is, the target detection is implemented by using an improved Itti model to generate a saliency map and segmenting the target area in the saliency map. Firstly, the wavelet transformation other than the Gaussian filter in the Itti model is used to generate a multi-scale pyramid. Then, the center-surround operators are used to extract multi-scale saliency difference signatures and the generated saliency signature maps are combined into a saliency map. Finally, a threshold segmentation method is used to segment the target area. The original images are marked so as to implement target detection. The experimental result shows that compared with the traditional Otsu threshold segmentation method, this method can detect the target area more accurately.