The invention discloses a method for detecting an image acquisition device, and the method comprises the step that a test pattern embedded with a digital watermark is produced for shooting the image acquisition device. Additionally, the test pattern output by the image acquisition device is also received and the digital watermark processed by the image acquisition device is extracted from the testpattern by the invention, thereby the extracted digital watermark can be compared with the original digital watermark and the shooting quality of the image acquisition device is determined based on the comparative results.