A new method was proposed to find the characteristic parameters of the vibration induced by the friction and wear of a sliding bearing. The parameters were obtained from the data of vibration signals using vibration sensors and processed with the continuous wavelet transform (CWT) and image technology. We collected the vibration signal of a ZCHSnSb8-8 bearing alloy and drew three-dimensional images with the time-frequency spectrum. Then, the important features were extracted by image segmentation technology. The parameters corresponding to the features were calculated with an algorithm to find the relationship between the parameters and the vibration characteristics. The results in this study revealed that the parameters of the vibration signal quantitatively represented the vibration characteristics of the sliding bearing caused by friction and wear. The new method is useful for assessing the health of a sliding bearing that has been deteriorated by the friction and wear of its friction pair.