The invention discloses a coal and rock identification method based on image discrete multi-wavelet transform. The method includes obtaining a group of coal sample images and rock sample images under the same image-forming conditions according to kinds of coal and rocks in a coal mine to be identified; extracting m samples from the images respectively and capturing sub-images f1, f2,..., fm and g1, g2,..., gm which have the same size and contain no backgrounds; performing a first-level Geronimo Hardin Massopust (GHM) multi-wavelet transform respectively on f1, f2,..., fm and g1, g2,..., gm and calculating multi-scale texture energy distribution vectors based on transform domain data for all the sub-images to obtain average multi-scale texture energy distribution vectors Vcoal and Vrock of the coal samples and the rock samples; during a coal and rock classification and identification stage, collecting to-be-identified coal and rock images under the same image-forming conditions, capturing a sub-image fx with the same size with the samples, performing the first-level GHM multi-wavelet transform on fx, and calculating the multi-scale texture energy distribution vector Vx; and determining coal and rock object types according to relations among the Vx, Vcoal and Vrock. According to the method, the coal and rock object types are identified through images, devices for collecting and processing images are convenient to arrange, the reliability and the identification rate are high, and upgrade maintenance of software and hardware is convenient.