Abstract: In order to solve the problem of automatic recognition of low SNR FLIR ground building in complex background, the paper proposes a target recognition approach based on target template. First, according to the prepared template, the real-time images are processed by morphology background suppression and target reconstruction. Second, by processing the reconstructed images with edge extraction and contour matching, the matched correlation peak matrix and ROI are attained. Then, RGC measurement is calculated in the ROI region according to target template. Finally, by integrating contour matching and RGC measurement results, the ultimate correlation peak matrix is obtained and the target recognition is achieved. Large amounts of data tests manifest that the rate of accurate recognition is above 92%, the location error is less than 2 pixels. The test results show this approach has advantages in speed, detecting performance and adaptability, which is easy to implement in hardware as well.