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arXiv:2311.11953 · Modern Physics Letters A

A quantum segmentation algorithm based on local adaptive threshold for NEQR image

Lu Wang, Wenjie Liu

Published Jul 20, 2022• 12 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The classical image segmentation algorithm based on local adaptive threshold can effectively segment images with uneven illumination, but with the increase of the image data, the real-time problem gradually emerges. In this paper, a quantum segmentation algorithm based on local adaptive threshold for NEQR image is proposed, which can use quantum mechanism to simultaneously compute local thresholds for all pixels in a gray-scale image and quickly segment the image into a binary image. In addition, several quantum circuit units, including median calculation, quantum binarization, etc. are designed in detail, and then a complete quantum circuit is designed to segment NEQR images by using fewer qubits and quantum gates. For a [Formula: see text] image with [Formula: see text] gray-scale levels, the complexity of our algorithm can be reduced to O[Formula: see text], which is an exponential speedup compared to the classic counterparts. Finally, the experiment is conducted on IBM Q to show the feasibility of our algorithm in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) era.

DOI
10.1142/s0217732322501395

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The classical image segmentation algorithm based on local adaptive threshold can effectively segment images with uneven illumination, but with the increase of the image data, the real-time problem gradually emerges. In this paper, a quantum segmentation algorithm based on local adaptive threshold for NEQR image is proposed, which can use quantum mechanism to simultaneously compute local thresholds for all pixels in a gray-scale image and quickly segment the image into a binary image. In addition, several quantum circuit units, including median calculation, quantum binarization, etc. are designed in detail, and then a complete quantum circuit is designed to segment NEQR images by using fewer qubits and quantum gates. For a [Formula: see text] image with [Formula: see text] gray-scale levels, the complexity of our algorithm can be reduced to O[Formula: see text], which is an exponential speedup compared to the classic counterparts. Finally, the experiment is conducted on IBM Q to show the feasibility of our algorithm in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) era.
The classical image segmentation algorithm based on grayscale morphology can effectively segment images with uneven illumination, but with the increase of the image data, the real-time problem will emerge. In order to solve this problem, a quantum image segmentation algorithm is proposed in this paper, which can use quantum mechanism to simultaneously perform morphological operations on all pixels in a grayscale image, and then quickly segment the image into a binary image. In addition, several quantum circuit units, including dilation, erosion, bottom hat transformation, top hat transformation, etc., are designed in detail, and then they are combined together to construct the complete quantum circuits for segmenting the NEQR images. For a2n×2n2^{n} \times 2^{n}2n×2nimage withqqqgrayscale levels, the complexity of our algorithm can be reduced to O(n2+q)(n^{2}+q)(n2+q), which is an exponential speedup than the classic counterparts. Finally, the experiment is conducted on IBM Q to show the feasibility of our algorithm in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) era.
Quantum image segmentation algorithm can use its quantum mechanism to rapidly segment the objects in a quantum image. However, the existing quantum image segmentation algorithms can only segment static objects in the image and use more quantum resource(qubit). In this paper, a novel quantum segmentation algorithm based on background-difference method for NEQR image is proposed, which can segment dynamic objects in a static scene image by using fewer qubits. In addition, an efficient and feasible quantum absolute value subtractor is designed, which is an exponential improvement over the existing quantum absolute value subtractor. Then, a complete quantum circuit is designed to segment the NEQR image. For a 2n{2^n}2n×\times×2n{2^n}2n image with gray-scale range of [0,2q2^q2q-1], the complexity of our algorithm is O(qqq), which has an exponential improvement over the classical segmentation algorithm, and the complexity will not increase as the image's size increases. The experiment is conducted on IBM Q to show the feasibility of our algorithm in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) era.
Abstract Quantum image segmentation algorithm is crucial for quantum image processing. In this paper, a dual-threshold quantum image segmentation algorithm is designed and simulated in IBM Quantum Experience (IBM Q) platform, which can segment a complex image into three parts using fewer quantum bits. In our algorithm, given a high threshold and a low threshold, grayscale values larger than the high threshold are set to the high threshold and grayscale values smaller than the low threshold are set to the low threshold, with no change for the part between the two thresholds. Then we use a low-cost quantum comparator and design a complete and scalable quantum image segmentation circuit. Analysis of the circuit cost shows that the quantum gates required for the circuit are only related to the grayscale range q and are independent of the image size. The feasibility of the algorithm and the correctness of the quantum circuit are verified by simulation in IBM Q platform, and finally the MSE, PSNR AND SSIM value of the image is analyzed to prove the effectiveness of the segmentation algorithm.
In order to develop and validate the quantum image processing algorithm on quantum computer, combined with quantum computing operation on IBM quantum experiment platform (IBM Q) and quantum image processing theory, a quantum image segmentation method based on IBM Q platform was designed. An improved enhanced quantum representation (IEQR) was proposed based on the existing novel enhanced quantum representation (NEQR). The quantum image segmentation circuit, which consists of the quantum bit string comparator (QBSC) and the Controlswap (Cswap) gate, is initialized according to the IEQR. Finally, quantum image segmentation of 2×2 and 4×4 size images are realized on IBM Q and local classical computer simulator. The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the algorithm and the superiority of quantum computers is validated.
Image segmentation is a fundamental operation in computer vision, used to partition an image into meaningful regions according to various attributes or spatial relationships among pixels. This paper presents a novel quantum circuit for two-threshold image segmentation implemented in the Novel Enhanced Quantum Representation (NEQR) format. Threshold-based segmentation is particularly attractive for quantum implementation due to its conceptual simplicity and inherent parallelism, but existing approaches suffer from a critical correctness issue: quantum RESET operations are applied to auxiliary qubits that may become entangled with the image data register during the segmentation process. We demonstrate, both theoretically and experimentally, that such RESET operations implicitly perform a measurement that collapses the superposition of the entangled quantum state, leading to non-reproducible segmentation results across repeated executions. To address this limitation, we propose a seven-step quantum segmentation pipeline that explicitly preserves entanglement integrity by allocating dedicated auxiliary qubits for each comparison stage, thereby eliminating unsafe qubit reuse. The proposed circuit encodes pixel intensities using the NEQR representation, applies upper and lower threshold comparators in sequence, and integrates both comparison outcomes to classify pixels into three intensity regions. Experiments conducted on a Qiskit StatevectorSimulator demonstrate that the proposed design produces stable and reproducible segmentation results across all test images, in contrast to the inconsistent behaviour observed in prior work. For images requiring 33 qubits, simulations consumed up to 128 GB of RAM with a total execution time of approximately 27 h on an Intel® Xeon® Gold 6240 CPU @ 2.60 GHz. The proposed approach establishes a robust foundation for quantum image segmentation on future fault-tolerant hardware.
Abstract The moving target segmentation (MTS) aims to segment out moving targets in the video, however, the classical algorithm faces the huge challenge of real‐time processing in the current video era. Some scholars have successfully demonstrated the quantum advantages in some video processing tasks, but not concerning moving target segmentation. In this paper, a quantum moving target segmentation algorithm for grayscale video is proposed, which can use quantum mechanism to simultaneously calculate the difference of all pixels in all adjacent frames and then quickly segment out the moving target. In addition, a feasible quantum comparator is designed to distinguish the grayscale values with the threshold. Then several quantum circuit units are designed in detail to construct the complete quantum circuits for segmenting the moving target. For a quantum video with 2 m frames (every frame is a image with q grayscale levels), the complexity of our algorithm can be reduced to O. Compared with the classic counterpart, it is an exponential speedup, while its complexity is also superior to the existing quantum algorithms. Finally, the experiment is conducted on IBM Quantum Experience (IBM Q) to show the feasibility of our algorithm in the noisy intermediate‐scale quantum era.