As the gas leak infrared imaging detection technology has significant advantages of high efficiency and remote imaging detection, in order to enhance the detail perception of observers and equivalently improve the detection limit, a novel gas leak infrared image compression and enhancement method based on bilateral filtering is proposed. The method controls the process of the bilateral filtering, compressing and enhancing according to the characteristics of the gas leak infrared image. The experimental results demonstrate that the trace of gas leak is enhanced significantly, the contrast of the entire image is appropriate, and the halo effect is suppressed effectively.