The damage of bridge cable directly hazards the normal use of bridge and the safety of people. The paper discussed the signal acquisition and detection system which takes embedded DSP processor as core technology, combined with CCD, video decode chip, SDRAM, FLASH ROM, and established the fast measuring algorithm of the surface corrosion and damage, which includes deteminating the processing region, improving medium filter, sobel edge detection and dynamic threshold segment, close operation of morphology, computing defect area and saving. The experimental resuits show that this method implemented the real-time, non-contact and intelligence detecting of cable surface defect and gives the specifications of the system.