In order to solve the problem that it is difficult to distinguish the upper and lower surfaces in the surface defect detection of transparent media, a single-sided imaging method of glass surface based on Fresnel formula is proposed. In this method, the change law of light polarization characteristics after reflection and refraction of linearly polarized light is used to optimize the incident angle and polarization direction of incident light, so that the polarization direction of imaging light on the upper and lower surfaces is close to orthogonal, and then the filtering characteristics of polarizer are used to select the required light for imaging. The optimal incident angle and polarization direction are obtained through theoretical calculation and simulation analysis, which are verified by experiments on the spectrometer, and the evaluation function is set to evaluate the imaging at different incident angles. Experiments show that this method can effectively eliminate the reflected light on any side of the upper and lower surfaces of transparent media, so as to realize single-sided selective imaging. After the evaluation and analysis of the evaluation function, it is found that the imaging effect is better when the incident angle is small. The scheme is simple and reliable, will not damage the test samples, and is easy to put into actual production.