This article proposes a content-based indexing and retrieval (CBIR) system based on query-by-visual-example using hierarchical binary signatures. Binary signatures are obtained through a described binarization process of classical features (color, texture and shape). The Hamming binary distance (based on binary XOR operation) is used for computing distances. This technique was tested on a real natural image collection containing 10 000 images and on a virtual collection of one million images. Results are very good both in terms of speed and accuracy allowing near real-time image retrieval in very large image collections.