The invention provides a respiration measurement method based on a camera and a spherical marker. The spherical marker attaches to the chest and abdomen of the human body, the images of the marker are collected by adopting the camera, the distance change between the marker and the camera can cause the change of the imaging size of the marker in the camera, by extracting the contour radius of the imaging region of the marker and recording the size change of the contour radius of the region in the continuous images, the respiration movement of the human body can be reflected, the respiration movement mode of the human body can be tracked, and the respiration frequency can be calculated. According to the respiration measurement method provided by the invention, the tracking on the respiration mode and the calculation for the respiration frequency are realized through the simple spherical marker and the camera, so that the connection of the expensive sensor and the discomfort caused to the human body are avoided, in addition, the complex tracking and calculating algorithm in other image measurement respiration algorithms are also avoided, and the respiration measurement method is beneficial for the measurement for the respiratory frequency and the tracking for the respiration mode in daily life.