Abstract: A method and system for processing multidimensional data. A method of forming multiresolution representations of data includes partitioning the data in a first dimension at a first rate, and partitioning the data in a second dimension at a second rate, wherein the first rate is not equal to the second rate. In one embodiment, the first rate is set to one, and the second rate is computed as the ratio of a smoothness estimate of the first dimension data and a smoothness estimate of the second dimension data. The partitioned data may be processed further through data compression, noise removal, or similar data processing methods.