Targeting the issue that the traditional target detection method has a high missing rate of minor target defects in the lithium battery electrode defect detection, this paper proposes an improved and optimized battery electrode defect detection model based on YOLOv8. Firstly, the lightweight GhostCony is used to replace the standard convolution, and the GhostC2f module is designed to replace part of the C2f, which reduces model computation and improves feature expression performance. Then, the coordinate attention (CA) module is incorporated into the neck network, amplifying the feature extraction efficiency of the improved model. Finally, the EIoU loss function is employed to swap out the initial YOLOv8 loss function, which improves the regression performance of the network. The empirical findings demonstrate that the enhanced model exhibits increments in crucial performance metrics relative to the original model: the precision rate is elevated by 2.4%, the recall rate by 2.3%, and the mean average precision (mAP) by 1.4%. The enhanced model demonstrates a marked enhancement in the frames per second (FPS) detection rate, significantly outperforming other comparative models. This evidence indicates that the enhanced model aligns well with the requirements of industrial development, demonstrating substantial practical value in industrial applications.