A novel hand vein recognition algorithm is developed based on multi-resolution wavelet analysis. The texture feature of hand vein can be extracted by three-level wavelet decomposition. Furthermore, K-nearest neighbor (KNN) with support vector machines (SVM) and minimum distance classifier (MDC) are employed for feature matching. Finally, the experiments are respectively performed in identification and verification modes using Tianjin University (TJU) hand vein image database constructed by our group. The results show the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.