When vector quantization is used in low rate image coding (e.g., R<0.5), the primary problem is the tremendous computational complexity which is required to search the whole codebook to find the closest codevector to an input vector. Since the number of code vectors in a vector quantizer is given by an exponential function of the dimension. i.e., L=2$^{nR}$ where Rn. To alleviate this problem, a multiple shell structure of hypercube feature maps (MSSHFM) is proposed. A binary HFM of k-dimension is composed of nodes at hypercube vertices and a multiple shell architecture is constructed by surrounding the k-dimensional hfm with a (k+1)-dimensional HFM. Such a multiple shell construction of nodes inherently has a complete tree structure in it and an efficient partial search scheme can be applied with drastically reduced computational complexity, computer simulations of still image coding were conducted and the validity of the proposed method has been verified.