The invention provides a metal wire rope on-line monitoring method and device. The monitoring device comprises an in-situ monitoring terminal comprising a communication module, a monitoring signal generation module, an electromagnetic push-pull dipole type signal emission probe, a magnetosensitive signal reception probe, a received signal preprocessing module, a motion scanning module, a controller, a memory and a power supply, and a remote monitoring terminal comprising a communication module, a flaw analysis module, an imaging display module, a man-machine interaction module, a processor, a memory and a power supply. The method utilizes a magnetic signal as an information carrier, actively emits a wideband alternating magnetic field excitation signal, utilizes an array magnetosensitive element to acquire two dimensional and three dimensional induced magnetic fields and a spatial distribution case of a metal wire rope under magnetic field signal excitation, can reversely deduce the physical characteristic parameter spatial distribution case of the metal wire rope and realizes a nondestructive test and damage localization of the metal wire rope under the condition of non-contact. The method and device have the advantages of high precision, high reliability, networking and intelligentization.