Circumferential Shear Horizontal (SH) waves are used for defect detection in thick wall pipe with the help of non-contact EMATs in pitch-catch configuration. Due to the complexity of circumferential SH wave propagation in thick wall pipe, Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT) is used to analyze guided wave energy distribution in time-frequency domain from received signals and extract wavelet coefficient at a certain frequency point. Wavelet coefficients envelope spectra of detection signals are compared to group velocity dispersion curves of circumferential SH wave in the thick wall pipe and guided wave mode components of detection signals are confirmed. Amplitude envelope map of the wavelet coefficients at specific frequency point of 310 kHz is extracted. According to extracted amplitude envelop map, actual group velocities of the circumferential SH wave modes in detection signals are accurately obtained. Furthermore, defect detection experiment is also achieved to investigate the potential of circumferential SH wave inspection in the thick wall pipe. Axial defect imaging is implemented by using the amplitude envelopes of the inspection signals obtained at different scanning locations.