A design of filters for pattern recognition is presented that have optimal trade-off for the criteria of noise robustness, peak sharp- ness, and Horner efficiency, when input scene noise is spatially disjoint (nonoverlapping) with the target. Three different criteria—signal-to-noise ratio, peak-to-output energy ratio, and light efficiency—are used to de- sign the filter. Computer simulations for the various types of noise and parameters illustrate the performance of such filters for optical pattern recognition. © 2000 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. (S0091-3286(00)03002-6) Subject terms: matched filtering; optical pattern recognition; multicriteria optimi- zation.