Abstract: An image retrieval method which includes producing multiscale vectors associated with points in a set of database images, indexing the database vectors to produce a database vector index, producing query multiscale vectors associated with points in a query image, and matching the query vectors with the indexed database vectors to identify a database image which is similar to the query image. Each of the database multiscale vectors and the query multiscale vectors includes multiple single scale vectors associated with corresponding spatial scales. The method can include applying a single scale image processing procedure at each of the spatial scales to produce single scale vectors and combining single scale vectors each associate with a given point in an image to form a multiscale vector associated with that point.