Aiming at the problem of magnetic anomaly detection under low signal-to-noise ratio, a full magnetic gradient detection via minimum entropy and gradient orthonormal basis function is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the mathematical model of magnetic dipole gradient tensor and the experimental method of collecting magnetic gradient tensor signals are introduced. Secondly, a new minimum entropy detector is designed, the basic functions which are processed by new minimum entropy detector can be orthogonalized easily. Thirdly, a group of new standard orthogonal basis functions are constructed according to the characteristics of magnetic gradient anomaly signals. Finally, the detector and orthogonal basis functions are used to detect the magnetic anomaly. Both numerical simulation signals and experiment signals are used to prove the effectiveness of the methods.