The invention provides a cell image detection method based on transfer learning, and the method comprises the steps: collecting a cell image through a Fourier laminated microscopic imaging system, carrying out fusion through frequency spectrum iteration, obtaining a large-view-field and high-resolution cell image, constructing a cell density estimation network through VGG and FPN network models, marking a cell center position in the cell image to obtain a cell density map, inputting the cell density map into a training model, constructing a cell detection network model by taking the trained network model as a backbone network, carrying out transfer learning, obtaining a cell detection map, inputting the cell detection map into the cell detection network model, extracting a candidate region by adopting an RPN, and carrying out position regression and classification on cells through a regression device and a classifier to finally obtain a cell prediction result. According to the method, based on transfer learning, the network model of common features of the similar data sets can be extracted through transfer learning training, the problem of insufficient training samples is solved, and meanwhile, the accuracy of model output is ensured.