The invention provides an infrared image adaptive enhancement method comprising the steps that the corresponding relationship of an image grayscale value and an equivalent blackbody temperature value is established according to the calibration data of an infrared image, and a corresponding quadratic curve calibration coefficient is calculated; the image grayscale value is converted into an equivalent blackbody temperature value image by using the quadratic curve calibration coefficient; image preprocessing is performed on the equivalent blackbody temperature value image, and the histogram, the histogram peak value and the mean value of the equivalent blackbody temperature value image are calculated; the upper limit and the lower limit of an image stretch threshold are calculated by using an adaptive algorithm according to the mean value and the histogram peak value of the equivalent blackbody temperature value image obtained through image preprocessing; and stretch enhancement is performed on the equivalent blackbody temperature value image by using a linear stretch mapping algorithm so as to obtain the image after stretch enhancement. With application of the infrared image adaptive enhancement method, adaptive enhancement processing can be performed on the acquired infrared image and the great enhancement effect can be acquired so that the visual effect of the infrared target image can be effectively improved.