Considering the practical application of target recognition with optoelectronic joint transform correlator, the infrared image detected was processed by multiwavelet transform, and its edge points were extracted by the method of local modulus maximum. Capturing much contour can improve the capacity of target recognition. The multiwavelet functions usually used to infrared target processing are GHM and SA4. Simulation experiments show that the correlation output of edges extracted by GHM is obviously better than that one of edges extracted by SA4, because the former edges carry much contour of image. Compared to the optical correlation detection result of original image with that of edge image extracted by GHM, it is found that the latter effectively enhances the intensity of correlation peaks.