Image matching method

The invention relates to an image matching method, comprising the following steps: (1) collecting images to be matched by an image collector and extracting template images from an image processor; (2) reducing the images to be matched and template images by half in the directions of width and height; (3) repeating step (2) until the images to be matched and template images reach specified sizes and carrying out gray scale normalization cross correlation matching on the reduced images to obtain the optimal matching positions (x, y); (4) returning to the previous images which are reduced by half and carrying out further matching on 9 search positions within the range of ((2x-1)-(2x+1), (2y-1)-(2y+1)) to obtain new optimal matching positions (x, y); (5) repeating step (2) until returning to the primary image, namely the original image, and carry out final matching to obtain the optimal matching positions and matching values. The method features shorter matching time and smaller amount of calculation.