Feature extraction and feature matching are two key steps in SAR target recognition. A method for SAR target recognition based on the matching of target regions is proposed. First, the binary target region of SAR image is extracted, which is then compared with the corresponding target region in the template base to produce the residual image. Euclidean distance transform is used to process the residual image, and the processed image is used for constructing a similarity criterion. The matching rate of the image to be identified with each type of target is then calculated out, and the type of target is judged according to the principle of the maximum matching rate. The target region residual can reflect the physical difference of the target to be identified with the other types of targets, and thus we can calculate the matching rate by use of the area and shape distribution of the residual. The change of Euclidean distance can reflect the shape distribution of the target region residual, and the residual based on the Euclidean distance transform can better reflect the matching rate of the target region. Target recognition test was carried out by using MSTAR dataset, and the result verifies the effectiveness of the method.