Aiming to address the problems of uneven brightness and small defects of low contrast on the surface of lithium-ion battery electrode (LIBE) coatings, this study proposes a defect detection method that combines background reconstruction with an enhanced Canny algorithm. Firstly, we acquire and pre-process the electrode coating image, considering the characteristics of the electrode coating process and defects. Secondly, background reconstruction and the difference method are introduced to achieve the rough localization of coating defects. Furthermore, the image with potential defects undergoes enhancement through improved Gamma correction, and the PSO-OTSU algorithm with adaptive searching is applied to determine the optimal segmentation. Finally, precise defect detection is accomplished using the improved Canny algorithm and morphological processing. The experimental results show that, compared with the maximum entropy method, the region growth method, and the traditional Canny algorithm, the algorithm in this paper has a higher segmentation accuracy for defects. It better retains defect edge features and provides a more accurate detection effect for defects like scratches, dark spots, bright spots, metal leakage, and decarburization, which are difficult to recognize on the background of coating areas of electrodes. The proposed method is suitable for the online real-time defect detection of LIBE coating defects in actual lithium-ion battery industrial production.