Abstract: To shorten the laser cutting path for improving the processing efficiency, and to avoid damaging the equipment due to cutting collisions, in this paper the cutting element is analyzed, its mathematical description is presented as well, after that it is proposed that a simulated annealing optimization algorithm is applied to seek the near-optimum path, which is based on image processing and the double-chain gene representation of the cutting path, then a program is designed to eliminate the cutting collisions. In the end the simulation by MATLAB shows that this algorithm can optimize the cutting path well ,and can also completely avoid the cutting collisions.