Abstract: Aiming at the registration of multi-sensor remote sensing images, a fast and effective image registration method was presented. Based on hierarchical candidate point set matching, the registration algorithm makes full use of the advantages of hierarchical matching and candidate point set matching approach, reduces feature extraction and searching space, and introduces distance calculation into the determination of homologous control point pairs, it can availably decide homologous control point pairs and decrease mismatching rate. The increased distance calculation has much lower time cost, and it does not change with the size of images. It is concerned with the number of final matched points in images. The effect of image registration algorithm was evaluated by subjective and objective method. Experiment results show the proposed algorithm can accurately register multi-spectral images and panchromatic images with some shift, rotation angles and background noises, and it can increase the speed and precision of registration.