Patrol path optimization is of great significance in various real applications. At present, there are many ways to optimize the patrol path from various angles, and there are also many studies on traditional ant algorithms. After studying the application of the existing traditional ant colony algorithm in patrol path optimization, we analyze the existing problems and difficulties, and propose an improved ant colony algorithm. After deeply studying the ant colony algorithm and patrol path optimization problem, the paper tries to introduce the improved ant colony algorithm into the problem based on the modeling of the patrol path problem. The experimental results show that the patrol path optimization method based on the improved ant colony algorithm has certain advantages over the ordinary patrol path optimization method.