Abstract: In non-destructive evaluation area, defect feature extraction and analysis based on eddy current pulsed thermography (ECPT) technique is a research focus. In this paper, a novel defect feature extraction approach is proposed to highlight the defect information in ECPT. The proposed approach includes entropy-based image selection, local (element-wise) sparse decomposition and image fusion. Comparing with other two common feature extraction algorithms, independent component analysis and robust principal component analysis, the proposed algorithm can extract more defect features and suppress background.