The invention discloses a method and a device for detecting moving vehicles on the basis of multi-frame differences and cast shadow removal, and relates to the field of intelligent traffic management and video monitoring. The method includes a, acquiring a sequence picture of a current frame; b, acquiring a gray value sequence picture of the current frame; c, acquiring characteristics of binary images of edges of the current frame and edges of interframe differences; d, acquiring edge characteristics of moving vehicles of the current frame; e, acquiring edge characteristics of shadow of the current frame; f, acquiring accurate edge characteristics of the shadow of the current frame; g, acquiring an accurate picture sequence of the edge characteristics of the moving vehicles; and h, extracting specific coordinates of the moving vehicles from the picture sequence. The method and the device have the advantages that a capture scheme on the basis of video detection is provided for an intelligent traffic system to detect the moving vehicles, the system is simple in installation and easy to maintain, moving vehicle capture rate is increased, and motor vehicle position detection precision is improved.