The present invention belongs to the intelligent traffic technology field, and especially relates to a fake-plate vehicle retrieval and identification system based on machine vision. The system mainly comprises a vehicle image collection system, a database system and a retrieval system. The fake-plate vehicle retrieval and identification system based on the machine vision performs retrieval of a suspected vehicle by means of vehicle decorations of the suspected vehicle such as vehicle ornaments, annual survey tags and the like, performs feature collection of the images of the vehicle decoration areas, and performs vehicle retrieval through adoption of a method based on the vehicle decoration area image sparse coding so as to solve the problem of searching a target vehicle from lots of traffic scene images and realize the accurate identification and discovering of a fake-plate vehicle.