The invention discloses a pointer instrument reading identification method. The method comprises the steps of extracting a dial plate, removing interference, and correcting the dial plate by using affine transformation; performing circle detection and straight line detection on the dial plate to obtain predicted circle center and pointer angle; based on features of a scale connected domain on thedial plate, screening out the scale connected domain, performing
linear fitting on the scale connected domain, calculating an intersection point of every two fitting straight lines, and performing screening
verification on a to-be-selected circle center by utilizing the predicted circle center and pointer angle to obtain the circle center of the dial plate, wherein a distance from the
centroid ofthe scale connected domain to the circle center on the dial plate is the
radius of the dial plate; and according to information such as the circle center of the dial plate, the
radius of the dial plate, the straight lines of a pointer, extracting an arc scale bar of the dial plate, expanding the arc scale bar in a rectangular shape, then according to horizontal coordinate distribution of scale onthe rectangular scale bar, performing minimum and maximum scale detection, noisy point removal and scale
insertion, and finally in combination with the pointer angle, calculating reading of the dial plate. The method is high in universality and high in timeliness; and the reading has relatively high accuracy.