An adaptive denoising method based on 2D empirical mode decomposition (EMD) is proposed to improve the infrared image quality of inspection UNMANNED aerial vehicles (UAVs) and provide guarantee for improving the inspection level of distribution network. Through rapid adaptive two-dimensional empirical mode decomposition algorithm decomposition of a UAV collected for distribution network inspection original noise of infrared image, get more than the IMF component and the residual amount, a forecast noise dominated the IMF component parameters such as threshold value and the variance of noise, using the estimated parameters in combination with the optimal linear interpolation algorithm of noise threshold function of leading the IMF component implementation of threshold denoising. After the denoised IMF component is obtained, the denoised infrared image is obtained after reconstruction with the signal-dominated IMF component, and the adaptive denoising of the infrared image of the distribution network inspection UAV is realized. The experimental results show that the method in this paper can maintain the details of the image, improve the definition, significantly improve the visual effect, the overall denoising performance is stable and feasible, and ensure the quality inspection UAV to collect infrared images.