In order to solve the problems of foreground occlusion, background noise interference, and low contrast in industrial CT images, an image enhancement method based on the improved whale optimization algorithm is proposed. First, tent mapping is used to initialize the population of the whale optimization algorithm, and the global search capability is improved by making the whale population more widely distributed. L-vy flight is then used to update the position of individual whales to further improve the local search capability of the algorithm. Finally, the improved whale optimization method is applied to find the best parameters of CLAHE and achieve the adaptive optimal enhancement of the image. Experimental results show that compared with several popular image enhancement algorithms, the method proposed in this article can better enhance industrial CT images, significantly improve image quality, and retain more detailed information.