By combining autoassociation and heteroassociation, an optical pattern recognition (OPR) system based on hybrid interpattern associative neural network is proposed. In this neural network, the input vector not only addresses itself by autoassociation but also addresses its mated vector by heteroassociation, so the correct addressing probability is increased. Compared with the matched spatial filter OPR system, the addressing results are direct, and this scheme is feasible and promising.