Feature extraction is an important factor to improve the recognition rate of coal and gangue. The existing feature extraction methods have some shortcomings in coal and gangue recognition, such as unsatisfactory recognition rate for actual images. Therefore, aiming at the shortcomings of existing coal and gangue feature extraction methods in coal and gangue recognition, the contour feature extraction method is researched based on images analysis to coal and gangue recognition. The center normalization detrended fluctuation analysis (CNDFA) feature extraction algorithm of contour is proposed based on the process of contour feature extraction for coal and gangue. Based on the analysis of the representative features of coal and gangue, the extraction process of target contour features is established based on hardness difference. Combined with the overall features of contour curve after detrending, a center normalized CNDFA feature extraction algorithm is proposed. First, the detrended analysis of contour curve is realized by least square optimal fitting, and then the detrended data are normalized. Finally, the contour features are described quantitatively by multifractal (MF) spectrum to form the geometric features of the target contour curve, which is used to train the support vector machine classifier. The experiment is carried out on the basis of image preprocessing, and the CNDFA method and other feature extraction methods, such as wavelet, gray level co-occurrence matrix, gray level difference statistics, auto-correlation function, and MF, are applied to the contour feature extraction of coal and gangue. Through the comprehensive comparison of the results after different methods recognition in confusion matrix, accuracy, and coal cleanliness, it is concluded that the overall effect of the CNDFA method is better than other methods, and the accuracy is improved by 5% to 25%. The results show that the CNDFA method has better performance. Compared with the other methods, it can better extract the contour features to improve the recognition rate of coal and gangue.