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arXiv:2506.03272

Investigating Quantum Feature Maps in Quantum Support Vector Machines for Lung Cancer Classification

Moulay Youssef El Hafidi, Achraf Toufah, Mohamed Achraf Kadim

Published Jun 3, 2025• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

In recent years, quantum machine learning has emerged as a promising intersection between quantum physics and artificial intelligence, particularly in domains requiring advanced pattern recognition such as healthcare. This study investigates the effectiveness of Quantum Support Vector Machines (QSVM), which leverage quantum mechanical phenomena like superposition and entanglement to construct high-dimensional Hilbert spaces for data classification. Focusing on lung cancer diagnosis, a concrete and critical healthcare application, we analyze how different quantum feature maps influence classification performance. Using a real-world dataset of 309 patient records with significant class imbalance (39 non-cancer vs. 270 cancer cases), we constructed six balanced subsets for robust evaluation. QSVM models were implemented using Qiskit and executed on the qasm simulator, employing three distinct quantum feature maps: ZFeatureMap, ZZFeatureMap, and PauliFeatureMap. Performance was assessed using accuracy, precision, recall, specificity, and F1-score. Results show that the PauliFeatureMap consistently outperformed the others, achieving perfect classification in three subsets and strong performance overall. These findings demonstrate how quantum computational principles can be harnessed to enhance diagnostic capabilities, reinforcing the importance of physics-based modeling in emerging AI applications within healthcare.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2506.03272

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•Jan 17, 2024•13 citations
In recent years, quantum machine learning has emerged as a promising intersection between quantum physics and artificial intelligence, particularly in domains requiring advanced pattern recognition such as healthcare. This study investigates the effectiveness of Quantum Support Vector Machines (QSVM), which leverage quantum mechanical phenomena like superposition and entanglement to construct high-dimensional Hilbert spaces for data classification. Focusing on lung cancer diagnosis, a concrete and critical healthcare application, we analyze how different quantum feature maps influence classification performance. Using a real-world dataset of 309 patient records with significant class imbalance (39 non-cancer vs. 270 cancer cases), we constructed six balanced subsets for robust evaluation. QSVM models were implemented using Qiskit and executed on the qasm simulator, employing three distinct quantum feature maps: ZFeatureMap, ZZFeatureMap, and PauliFeatureMap. Performance was assessed using accuracy, precision, recall, specificity, and F1-score. Results show that the PauliFeatureMap consistently outperformed the others, achieving perfect classification in three subsets and strong performance overall. These findings demonstrate how quantum computational principles can be harnessed to enhance diagnostic capabilities, reinforcing the importance of physics-based modeling in emerging AI applications within healthcare.
Background: Classical algorithms often struggle with the high dimensionality of medical data critical for early lung cancer diagnosis. While Quantum Machine Learning (QML) offers enhanced pattern recognition capabilities, the impact of specific quantum feature encoding strategies on diagnostic accuracy remains underexplored.Methods: We evaluated Quantum Support Vector Machines (QSVM) using a dataset of 309 lung cancer patients, divided into six balanced subsets to mitigate class imbalance. Models were implemented on a qasm simulator, comparing three encoding strategies: ZFeatureMap, ZZFeatureMap, and PauliFeatureMap. Performance was assessed using standard classification metrics.Results: The choice of feature map significantly influenced model efficacy. The PauliFeatureMap outperformed other kernels, achieving 100% classification accuracy in three of the six subsets, whereas ZFeatureMap and ZZFeatureMap yielded lower predictive consistency.Conclusion: Quantum feature map selection is a decisive factor in QSVM performance. Specifically, the PauliFeatureMap demonstrates high separability for medical data, highlighting the potential of optimized quantum kernels to improve diagnostic precision.
Background Lung cancer is a leading cause of cancer mortality, and early detection is critical for patient outcomes. Support Vector Machines (SVM) have been widely applied to diagnostic classification, but their performance can be limited in terms of sensitivity. Quantum Support Vector Machines (QSVM) offer a potential approach to improve this aspect. Methods We compared SVM and QSVM on balanced lung cancer subsets (1,000 samples each) using k-fold cross-validation. QSVM employed ZZFeatureMap and FidelityQuantumKernel for quantum feature encoding. Results QSVM achieved an average recall improvement of about 8% over classical SVM, while maintaining comparable precision and accuracy. Under a realistic 1:100 class imbalance, precision declined, highlighting challenges with highly skewed data. Conclusion QSVM shows promise for enhancing sensitivity in medical diagnostics but requires further validation on larger, heterogeneous datasets and real quantum hardware. Clinical trial number Not applicable.
Effective and accurate diagnosis of diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and heart failure is crucial for timely medical intervention and improving patient survival rates. Machine learning has revolutionized diagnostic methods in recent years by developing classification models that detect diseases based on selected features. However, these classification tasks are often highly imbalanced, limiting the performance of classical models. Quantum models offer a promising alternative, exploiting their ability to express complex patterns by operating in a higher-dimensional computational space through superposition and entanglement. These unique properties make quantum models potentially more effective in addressing the challenges of imbalanced datasets. This work evaluates the potential of quantum classifiers in healthcare, focusing on Quantum Neural Networks (QNNs) and Quantum Support Vector Machines (QSVMs), comparing them with popular classical models. The study is based on three well-known healthcare datasets—Prostate Cancer, Heart Failure, and Diabetes.The results indicate that QSVMs outperform QNNs across all datasets due to their susceptibility to overfitting. Furthermore, quantum models prove the ability to overcome classical models in scenarios with high dataset imbalance. Although preliminary, these findings highlight the potential of quantum models in healthcare classification tasks and lead the way for further research in this domain.
Abstract In this study, we compare the performance of classical Support Vector Machines (SVM) and Quantum Support Vector Machines (QSVM) on binary classification tasks, using 149 balanced datasets derived from a lung cancer diagnosis dataset. Each dataset consists of 120 samples and 12 features. Our primary objective is to evaluate whether QSVM provides measurable advantages over SVM, particularly in low-performing scenarios. To this end, we identified the 15 datasets where classical SVM exhibited the lowest F1-scores and conducted a focused comparative analysis. Results show that, in these challenging cases, QSVM achieved an average recall improvement of 99% over SVM, without compromising precision. This substantial gain in recall also led to a corresponding 48% increase in F1-score, on average. Statistical analysis using a normality test followed by a paired t-test confirmed the significance of these results. These findings suggest that QSVM can serve as a valuable alternative in situations where classical models struggle, especially when high recall is critical for early cancer detection.
This study addresses the urgent need for improved prostate cancer detection methods by harnessing the power of advanced technological solutions. We introduce the application of Quantum Support Vector Machine (QSVM) to this critical healthcare challenge, showcasing an enhancement in diagnostic performance over the classical Support Vector Machine (SVM) approach. Our study not only outlines the remarkable improvements in diagnostic performance made by QSVM over the classic SVM technique, but it delves into the advancements brought about by the quantum feature map architecture, which has been carefully identified and evaluated, ensuring it aligns seamlessly with the unique characteristics of our prostate cancer dataset. This architecture succeded in creating a distinct feature space, enabling the detection of complex, non-linear patterns in the data. The findings reveal not only a comparable accuracy with classical SVM (92%92\%92%) but also a 7.14%7.14\%7.14% increase in sensitivity and a notably high F1-Score (93.33%93.33\%93.33%). This study's important combination of quantum computing in medical diagnostics marks a pivotal step forward in cancer detection, offering promising implications for the future of healthcare technology.
Abstract This study addresses the urgent need for improved prostate cancer detection methods by harnessing the power of advanced technological solutions. We introduce the application of Quantum Support Vector Machine (QSVM) to this critical healthcare challenge, showcasing an enhancement in diagnostic performance over the classical Support Vector Machine (SVM) approach. Our study not only outlines the remarkable improvements in diagnostic performance made by QSVM over the classic SVM technique, but it delves into the advancements brought about by the quantum feature map architecture, which has been carefully identified and evaluated, ensuring it aligns seamlessly with the unique characteristics of our prostate cancer dataset. This architecture succeded in creating a distinct feature space, enabling the detection of complex, non-linear patterns in the data. The findings reveal not only a comparable accuracy with classical SVM (92%) but also a 7.14% increase in sensitivity and a notably high F1-Score (93.33%). This study's important combination of quantum computing in medical diagnostics marks a pivotal step forward in cancer detection, offering promising implications for the future of healthcare technology.