The invention discloses a target recognition and shape retrieval method based on hierarchical description. The method comprises the following steps of: extracting the profile feature of a target by a profile extracting algorithm, calculating a curvature value of each point on the profile target, extracting the angular point feature of the target by non-maximum value suppression, taking a profile segment corresponding to every two angular points as an overall feature describer of the target, carrying out hierarchical description on the profile points according to curvature, carrying out hierarchical description on the profile segments according to the importance degrees of value features, combining profile segments, the values of which are lower than evaluation thresholds, to form profile feature segments as partial feature describers of the target, carrying out normalization on the profile feature segments, and carrying out similarity measurement on the profile feature segments of different targets according to Shape Contexts distance. The method can be used for performing feature extraction on a target shape effectively, scale invariance, rotation invariance and translation invariance are achieved, the accuracy rate and the robustness in recognition are improved, and the computation complexity is reduced.