Image has various inherent features which reflect its content such as color, texture, shape, and spatial relationship features etc. One of the key issues in image retrieval based on combined features is how to retrieve similar images from different features. In this paper, we propose a Content Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) system for retrieval of similar images. In this work, two-step content -based medical image retrieval framework is proposed. A candidate subset is first created utilizing the energy efficient wavelet decomposition. The actual retrieval process is then constrained within this candidate subset. Besides the improved efficiency due to the reduced searching space, this framework also leads to improved retrieval accuracy. In a content based image retrieval system, the reliability of retrieval results depends much on the image features. Energy efficient wavelet transform can also be easily extended to 2-D (image) or 3-D (volume) data by successively applying 1- D transformation on different dimensions. The proposed algorithm was tested and the performance analysis is done with Haar wavlet transform. The obtained retrieval accuracy suggesting that the proposed framework can be very much useful in decision making. © EuroJournals Publishing, Inc. 2011.