A methodology for acquiring measurements of a signal at one or more scales of resolution, including: generating modulation patterns based on a predefined measurement matrix; modulating a received signal with the modulation patterns using the signal modulating array to obtain a modulated signal; and acquiring measurements of intensity of the modulated signal. Each modulation pattern is generated by: (a) selecting a corresponding row of the measurement matrix; (b) reordering elements of the selected row according to a permutation to obtain a reordered row; and (c) transferring the reordered row to the signal modulating array so that elements of the reordered row are mapped onto the signal modulating array. The permutation is defined so that a subset of the modulation patterns are coarse patterns that respect a partition of the signal modulating array into an array of superpixels, each superpixel including a respective group of the signal modulating elements.