Image processing techniques have seen many developments in recent years. Starting from the pioneering work of Canny, Deriche developed a second order recursive filter capable of detecting stepped contours. However, there are other contour shapes that those filters struggle to detect. We describe a new optimal filter sensu Canny for detecting ridge-line contours. This is a third order recursive and even filter. It is dependent on three parameters by which detection accuracy is adjusted. The results obtained by applying this filter to (possibly noise-affected) images are compared with those in the work by Ziou.