The invention provides a fault diagnosis method of a variable-speed rotation machine based on time-frequency spectrum segmentation. The method includes following steps: step 1, obtaining normalized time-frequency spectrums of signals through multi-resolution generalized S transform, and generating multi-resolution binarized time frequency spectrums; step 2, combining the binarized time-frequency spectrums with all resolutions, and obtaining an optimal binarized time-frequency spectrum; step 3, segmenting the optimal binarized time-frequency spectrum into a plurality of connected domains, and performing information annotation on each connected domain; step 4, extracting an optimal expression atom of each connected domain, forming an optimal atom set, and calculating the expression of a fault signal in the optimal atom set; and step 5, calculating the appearance time and amplitude of an impact theory, and realizing fault diagnosis of variable-sped mechanical equipment through informationcomparison. According to the method, most strong background noises can be filtered, and fault diagnosis of impact type faults including cracking, pitting corrosion or spalling etc. of the variable-speed rotation machine can be realized.