We wish to produce a database for the comparison of the embedded
population of massive stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud and its well
studied emerged population of OB stars. This comparison has direct
implications on diverse problems related to early evolution of massive stars
and their parental gas, the lifetime of ultracompact HII regions and
their confining mechanisms, the buildup of the upper end of the main
sequence, and the regulation of large scale star formation in molecular
clouds.
The sensitivity of ISOCAM allows imaging of all the ultracompact HII regions
detected by IRAS in the Large Magellanic Cloud within a relatively short
observing time. Moreover, the ten-fold increase in spatial resolution
permits addressing other questions, such as the morphology and the
clustering of these objects, which were beyond the capabilities of IRAS
data. Finally, we wish to explore new color-color criteria for automated
selection of ultracompact HII regions, more suitable to data obtained by
ground-based telescopes in the future. A critical aspect in this respect
is the analysis of the capability of these color-color criteria to
produce both uncontaminated and complete samples, useful for statistical
studies of the embedded massive stellar population in ours and nearby
galaxies.