In order to improve the recognition ability of joint transform correlator in complex background, we propose a joint transform correlator based on wavelet transform edge detection. Multi-scale analysis of wavelet is used to detect the joint image edge, so that the edge can keep more details, and the ability of target recognition in complex background can be improved. Computer simulations and optical experimental results show that, our proposed method can enhance the intensity of the correlation peaks and improve the ability of correlation recognition greatly.