In order to solve the problems of high computational complexity and poor detection effect of small targets in strip defect detection,a small target detection algorithm based on improved YOLOv7 was proposed to distinguish the sur-face defects generated by strip steel in the production process.On the basis of YOLOv7,firstly,the loss function CIOU of the loss part is replaced by MPDiou,which can better deal with the intersection and occlusion between the target boxes.Then,PConv(Partial Convolution)is used to replace the convolution of the backbone part in YOLOv7,which can reduce the redundant computation of the algorithm.Finally,the SimAM(simple attention mechanism),dynamic snake convolution and BiFPN feature fusion modules are introduced into the Head part of YOLOv7.