Abstract: A new optical system for real-time pattern recognition is presented, which mainly consists of a laser diode, an acoustooptic device with multi-transducer, a charge-coupled device and optical lenses. Neither the coherent optical input image nor the Fourier transform hologram of the reference image is required by this system. Real-time video signals from imaging system operating in different spectrum and the reference images either pre-recorded or acquired in real-time can be applied to the present system. Theoretical analysis is given to describe the system operation. Experimental results have confirmed that this incoherent optical correlator system possesses the capability of performing real-time pattern recognition. In fact, the image shift, scale, rotation invariance problems encountered in some pattern recognition tasks can easily be solved in this system.