In lung CT images, the edge of a tumor is frequently fuzzy because of the complex relationship between tumors and tissues, especially in cases that the tumor adheres to the chest and lung in the pathology area. This makes the tumor segmentation more difficult. In order to segment tumors in lung CT images accurately, a method based on support vector machine (SVM) and improved level set model is proposed. Firstly, the image is divided into several block units; then the texture, gray and shape features of each block are extracted to construct eigenvector and then the SVM classifier is trained to detect suspicious lung lesion areas; finally, the suspicious edge is extracted as the initial contour after optimizing lesion areas, and the complete tumor segmentation can be obtained by level set model modified with morphological gradient. Experimental results show that this method can efficiently and fast segment the tumors from complex lung CT images with higher accuracy.