A shift-invariant optical continuous wavelet transform is used for pat
tern recognition. We propose an optical wavelet matched filter that pe
rforms optical wavelet transforms for edge enhancement and the correla
tion between two wavelet transforms in a single step. This new bandpas
s matched filter shows improved discrimination capability with respect
to the conventional matched filter and improved signal-to-noise ratio
with respect to the phase-only matched filter. The wavelet matched fi
lter provides flexibility of an adaptive choice of the scale factors o
f the wavelets that permit the selection of size and orientation of th
e smoothing function used in edge enhancement and the optimization of
the performance of the filter. Optical experimental results are shown.