In the infrared image measurement,the tail flame of the aircraft is affected by the flight trajectory and airflow.The morphological change is complex,so the conventional target location method is difficult to realize the location.Aim at this problem,according to the specific requirements of image interpretation in target measurement and according to the principle of tail flame formation,a tracking method of aircraft tail flame based on Hough transform is proposed.The center line of tail flame is accurately detected by centroid method and Hough transform.The method overcomes the influence of the change of the tail flame and the diffraction of the lens on the target image tracking,and realizes the stable tracking and precise positioning of the tail flame.The experimental results show that the method is stable and accurate,and is suitable for tailing localization in various situations,and the algorithm is simple and has high efficiency.