A tropical cyclone (TC) is one of the most destructive natural disasters that can cause heavy loss of life and property. Determining a TC’s center is crucial to TC forecasting. It is difficult to locate the center of a TC during its formation stage and dissipation period. To address this problem, a novel objective algorithm called cloud motion wind (CMW) was proposed for detecting a TC’s center using infrared (IR) image sequences from a geostationary meteorology satellite. First, the optical flow model with weighted median filtering was utilized to build a cloud motion wind field. Second, the density matrix method was used to calculate the center of the TC. FY-2E (Fengyun-2E geostationary meteorological satellites) IR images of three TCs in the Northwest Pacific, Halong, Rammasun and Haiyan were analyzed using the proposed algorithm. The present algorithm estimated the track with an averaged track error of around 41 km. Experimental results compared with the observed track that was given by the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) show that the proposed method provided accurate estimates of the cyclone center. The present algorithm has the potential to be employed to assist forecasters to detect the track of imminent TC. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.