Quality inspection plays an important role in the process of silicon solar cell production.Based on the characteristics of silicon solar cell,a visual inspection method for silicon solar cell was proposed.Shape dimension was measured by line and circle fitting and based on which outline edge defect was implemented by calculating the distance from the edge points to fitting lines and circles.Since the surface texture structure is more complicated after screen printing,a multi-template matching method combined with image subtraction was adopted to detect the defects of screen printing.The experimental results show that the silicon solar cell inspection method is stable,reliable and of high precision,which achieves a rapid and effective silicon solar cell inspection.