Abstract: In order to meet real time and tracking reliability requirements for image tracking system installed in modern weapon system, based on the target signatures being tracked by the system, fractal geometry based edge extraction method was adopted in an image tracking system, and a target tracking solution based on moving area and edge image was put forward. The edge extraction method not only extracts the outline of the target, but also keeps the inner details, thus the optimum matching position found by template matching becomes more reliable. Meanwhile, edge extraction is only processed in moving area to reduce computation greatly, especially for longrange tracking. In addition, based on the matching with the edge image, the adaptive template modification is applied in edge image matching to minimize the effect of distortion and illumination variation etc. and make the tracking process more accurate and reliable. Simulation results demonstrate that this method demands much less computation and could meet the realtime requirements of the weapon system.