In the determination of trace yttrium (Y) in an ytterbium (Yb) matrix by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES), the most prominent line of yttrium, Y 371.030 nm line, suffers from strong interference due to an emission line of ytterbium. In this work, a method based on wavelet transform was proposed for the spectral interference correction. Haar wavelet was selected as the mother wavelet. The discrete detail after the third decomposition, D3,was chosen for quantitative analysis based on the consideration of both separation degree and peak height. The linear correlation coefficient between the height of the left positive peak in D3 and the concentration of Y was calculated to be 0.9926.Six synthetic samples were analyzed, and the recovery for yttrium varied from 96.3% to 110.0%. The amounts of yttrium in three ytterbium metal samples were determined by the proposed approach with an average relative standard deviation (RSD)of 2.5%, and the detection limit for yttrium was 0.016%. This novel correction technique is fast and convenient, since neither complicated model assumption nor time-consuming iteration is required. Furthermore, it is not affected by the wavelength drift inherent in monochromators that will severely reduce the accuracy of results obtained by some chemometric methods.