A polarization axis detection algorithm is proposed based on the symmetric features of end-view images, in which the polar coordinate transformation of the images is first used to realize the symmetry detection of images, the pyramid searching method is then utilized to quickly find the optimal symmetric axis, and finally the direction of the polarization axis is determined. Since the proposed algorithm can achieve an accurate positioning by utilizing the global features of images instead of the edge points in the stress region, the requirement for the sharpness of image is greatly reduced. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm possesses high accuracy and precision (±0.1°), indicating the robustness is greatly enhanced, and simultaneously the speed of this algorithm is improved by nearly 1.5 times.