A single sample face recognition algorithm based on B-spline and image gradient is proposed. Image gradient method for face recognition has advantage of illumination invariant. But the recognition rate will be greatly decreased when the image contains noise which will seriously influence gradient information. Traditional methods to reduce noise smooth image at the same time and image gradient reorganization rate will be reduced. As the B-spline filter has the feature which can adjust the order, B-spline filter with different orders can be selected according to the image noise value to minimize noise while preserve image gradient information. Experiments prove that using B-spline and image gradient algorithm can achieve a better recognition rate than traditional filtering method on single sample face recognition problem.