Based on the active contour model (Snakes) theory, the road extraction of high resolution remote sensing images is studied. According to characteristics of roads in high resolution remote sensing images, an active contour model more suited to the road extraction is drawed by improving the existing method, and the road extraction is completed. IKONOS image of 1 m resolution is studied, and results show that this method can be used to extract the road edge information of high resolution images.