Abstract: Due to the contrast difference of infrared and visible images, the common registration methods based on gradient magnitude are difficult to match correctly. A novel algorithm based on the phase congruency edge detection and Hough transform was proposed by analyzing the imaging mechanism. The Gauss filter and platform histogram equalization method was applied to enhance infrared image contrast. The phase congruency algorithm with image contrast invariance was used to extract the edge of the two images. And the longest line was selected by Hough transform as the similar characteristics. Then the modified phase correlation method was used as the similarity measurement to compute geometric deformation parameters of two images under the log-polar domain. The experimental results indicated that the algorithm could achieve higher precision and robustness for infrared and visible image automatic registration.