In industrial applications, it is necessary to accurately detect scratches on the surface of a quad flat no-lead package (QFN) chip in real time. A rapid chip surface scratch detection and location method was proposed. According to image segmentation algorithm, a defect image can be acquired firstly. Then by combining with the contour extraction algorithm, the chip surface scratch location can be achieved. At the same time, in order to ensure real-time detection of scratches on the chip surface, image segmentation is further completed by using the Otsu multi-threshold algorithm based on particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm, which not only makes the defect area in the image more obvious, but also shortens the scratch detection time on the chip surface. Compared with the direct use of the Otsu algorithm, the scratch detection time on the chip surface is reduced from seconds to milliseconds, and the chip quality detection efficiency has been improved greatly. It is shown that the method has important reference value for the development and application of software systems for chip detection equipment.