Abstract The quality of thermal light ghost imaging could be degraded by undersampling noise. This kind of noise is generated because of finite sampling, which could reduce the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of ghost imaging and submerge object information. In order to reduce the undersampling noise, we propose a thermal light ghost imaging scheme based on the morphology (GIM). In this scheme, the average size of the undersampling noise can be obtained by computing the second-order correlation function of the ghost imaging system. According to the average size of the undersampling noise, the corresponding structure element can be designed and used in the morphological filter; then, the GIM reconstructed image can be obtained. The experiment results show that the peak signal-to-noise ratio of the GIM reconstructed image can increased by 80% than that of conventional ghost imaging for the same number of measurements.