In order to improve the performance of Joint Transform Correlators(JTCs), the swarm intelligence method is used in a JTC to preprocess the joint plane image.Firstly, the concept of swarm intelligence method is introduced, and the feature of potential distribution and consistence with biological self-governing is illustrated.On the basis of above, an input plane image feature extraction method based on swarm intelligence is proposed,and then the basic theory of classicals JTC is introduced and its advantages and disadvantages are analyzed.Finally, the proposed image feature extraction method is used to preprocess the joint image in JTC.Processed results are compared with those of classical JTC and the JTC based on sobel operator in the extraction of joint image.Experimental results show that the crosscorrelation peak of swarm intelligence JTC is 4 240,which is larger 2 906 than that of the sobel JTC and larger 1 616 than that of the morphological JTC.These results show that preprocessing the input plane images by the proposed method is superior to those by traditional methods.