A fast image segmentation algorithm based on salient features model and spatial-frequency domain adaptive kernel is proposed to solve the accurate discriminate objects problem of online visual detection in such scenes of variable sample morphological characteristics, low contrast and complex background texture. Firstly, by analyzing the spectral com-ponent distribution and spatial contour feature of the image, a salient feature model is established in spatial-frequency domain. Then, the salient object detection method based on Gaussian band-pass filter and the design criterion of adaptive convolution kernel are proposed to extract the salient contour feature of the target in spatial and frequency domain. Finally, the selection and growth rules of seed points are improved by integrating the gray level and contour features of the target, and the target is segmented by seeded region growing. Experiments have been performed on Berkeley Segmentation Data Set, as well as sample images of online detection, to verify the effectiveness of the algorithm. The experimental results show that the Jaccard Similarity Coefficient of the segmentation is more than 90%, which indicates that the proposed algorithm can availably extract the target feature information, suppress the background texture and resist noise interference. Besides, the Hausdorff Distance of the segmentation is less than 10, which infers that the proposed algorithm obtains a high evaluation on the target contour preservation. The experimental results also show that the proposed algorithm significantly improves the operation efficiency while obtaining comparable segmentation performance over other algorithms.