This research investigates the application of sum-of-squares (SOS) optimization method on finite element model updating through minimization of modal dynamic residuals. The modal dynamic residual formulation usually leads to a nonconvex polynomial optimization problem, the global optimality of which cannot be guaranteed by most off-the-shelf optimization solvers. The SOS optimization method can recast a nonconvex polynomial optimization problem into a convex semidefinite programming (SDP) problem. However, the size of the SDP problem can grow very large, sometimes with hundreds of thousands of variables. To improve the computation efficiency, this study exploits the sparsity in SOS optimization to significantly reduce the size of the SDP problem. A numerical example is provided to validate the proposed method.