The invention provides a sub pixel edge based circle center detecting method. The method includes steps of 1, utilizing a Canny operator to performing rough positioning on an image edge, acquiring the gradient magnitude and gradient direction of integer pixel point edge; 2, establishing a positive direction taking the integer pixel point as the origin and the taking the gradient direction as the x axis, taking 7 pixel points in central symmetry in the gradient direction, wherein the symmetry center which is the integer pixel point is among the 7 pixel points, performing gray level fitting on the 7 pixel points by adopting a hyperbolic tangent function in a formula of I(x)=-b / 2 tanh(p(x-R))+h+b / 2, wherein I(x) indicates the gray level in x position, x indicates the distance between the pixel point to the origin, h indicates background gray level, b indicates the gray level difference value of the edge and the background, p is a fuzzy factor, and R is the edge position; and 3, obtaining a sub pixel edge point according to the formula in the step 2, performing least square fit on the sub pixel edge point according to a circle and obtaining circle center coordinates.