Edges are of fundamental importance in the analysis of images, and of course in the field of image quality. To incorporate the edge information as coded by the HVS in a vector quantization scheme, we have developed a classification strategy to separate edge vectors form non- edge vectors. This strategy allows the generation of different sets of codewords of different size for each kind of vectors. For each one of the 'edge' sets, the final size is perceptually tuned. Finally, when an image is encoded, its associated edge map is generated. Then the selection of the appropriate 'edge' set is made in respect with the edge amount present in the image. Then the second set of non-edge vectors is performed in order to respect the required compression rate. Statistical measure and psychophysical experiments have been performed to judge the quality of reconstructed images.