Quantum machine learning (QML) has attracted considerable research interest, yet whether it offers practical benefits over classical approaches remains an open question. The choice of data encoding significantly influences QML performance, but why certain encodings outperform others remains poorly understood. We employ Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) to discover optimal data encoding circuits for a quantum-classical convolutional neural network (QCCNN) combining a non-variational quantum block for feature extraction with a classical classifier. Evaluating on two medical imaging datasets, the discovered circuits outperform commonly used encoding strategies while showing competitive results compared to purely classical counterparts. We further analyze metrics to identify predictors of encoding performance. Entanglement capability and Fourier decomposition provide minimal insight, whereas the effective rank of the feature maps exhibits meaningful correlation and can serve as a threshold criterion to accelerate the search for high-performing encodings. Our findings provide both a practical method for encoding discovery and new insights into what makes data encodings effective in QML.
Quantum machine learning (QML) has attracted considerable research interest, yet whether it offers practical benefits over classical approaches remains an open question. The choice of data encoding significantly influences QML performance, but why certain encodings outperform others remains poorly understood. We employ Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) to discover optimal data encoding circuits for a quantum-classical convolutional neural network (QCCNN) combining a non-variational quantum block for feature extraction with a classical classifier. Evaluating on two medical imaging datasets, the discovered circuits outperform commonly used encoding strategies while showing competitive results compared to purely classical counterparts. We further analyze metrics to identify predictors of encoding performance. Entanglement capability and Fourier decomposition provide minimal insight, whereas the effective rank of the feature maps exhibits meaningful correlation and can serve as a threshold criterion to accelerate the search for high-performing encodings. Our findings provide both a practical method for encoding discovery and new insights into what makes data encodings effective in QML.
Quantum machine learning was recently applied to various applications and leads to results that are comparable or, in certain instances, superior to classical methods, in particular when few training data is available. These results warrant a more in-depth examination of when and why improvements can be observed. A key component of quantum-enhanced methods is the data encoding strategy used to embed the classical data into quantum states. However, a clear consensus on the selection of a fitting encoding strategy given a specific use-case has not yet been reached. This work investigates how the data encoding impacts the performance of a quantum-classical convolutional neural network (QCCNN) on two medical imaging datasets. In the pursuit of understanding why one encoding method outperforms another, two directions are explored. Potential correlations between the performance of the quantum-classical architecture and various quantum metrics are first examined. Next, the Fourier series decomposition of the quantum circuits is analyzed, as variational quantum circuits generate Fourier-type sums. We find that while quantum metrics offer limited insights into this problem, the Fourier coefficients analysis appears to provide better clues to understand the effects of data encoding on QCCNNs.
Quantum machine learning is receiving significant attention currently, but its usefulness in comparison to classical machine learning techniques for practical applications remains unclear. However, there are indications that certain quantum machine learning algorithms might result in improved training capabilities with respect to their classical counterparts - which might be particularly beneficial in situations with little training data available. Such situations naturally arise in medical classification tasks. Within this paper, different hybrid quantum-classical convolutional neural networks (QCCNN) with varying quantum circuit designs and encoding techniques are proposed. They are applied to two- and three-dimensional medical imaging data, e.g. featuring different, potentially malign, lesions in computed tomography scans. The performance of these QCCNNs is already similar to the one of their classical counterparts therefore encouraging further studies towards the direction of applying these algorithms within medical imaging tasks.
This research evaluates the performance of classical and quantum machine learning models for epileptic seizure detection using the BONN and DELHI EEG datasets. The data pipeline includes a preprocessing step with feature extraction followed by multiple dimensionality reduction techniques. Seven quantum data encoding strategies (Phase, Angle, Dense Angle, Pauli Feature Map, Efficient SU2, Z Feature Map, and ZZ Feature Map) were evaluated to analyze their impact on the expressivity of quantum circuits and model performance. Classical models, including Decision Tree and Random Forest classifiers, consistently achieved high accuracy on the BONN and Delhi datasets, with performance exceeding 90\% across most dimensionality-reduction settings. Quantum models demonstrated competitive yet generally lower performance than classical baselines; however, certain combinations of encoding methods and dimensionality reduction techniques achieved the most promising results for both datasets. Overall, the study highlights the influence of encoding strategies and dataset characteristics on quantum machine learning performance and provides a comparative analysis that supports future optimization of quantum approaches for EEG-based seizure detection.
When it comes to realizing immediate quantum advantages in practical applications like machine learning and optimization techniques, numerous methods have emerged as a frontrunner technique. Such algorithms often involve quantum circuits for data encoding and the training of Quantum Neural Networks (QNNs) to minimize target functions when applied to tasks involving classical data. Quantum Machine Learning (QML) is a promising area of quantum computing because it may effectively handle difficult learning tasks by taking advantage of the high dimensional Hilbert space to train better representations from limited data. Despite QML's rising popularity, few academic works have addressed the language's security features. There has been a lot of buzz about the promising new discipline of quantum machine learning. Training a parameterized quantum circuit is a common practice in contemporary QML for performing data analysis on classical or quantum datasets. To make accurate predictions on an independent test dataset, state-of-the-art QML techniques first variationally optimize a parameterized quantum circuit using the training dataset. Quantum modeling in QML has also been shown to offer an exponential benefit in sample complexity. In the realms of pattern recognition, machine learning, and data mining, feature dimensionality reduction as a crucial link in the process has become one hot and tough spot. Most academics have gravitated towards this topic because of the difficulty of its studies. The goal of this research is to learn how to implement low loss in the procedure of feature dimension reduction, preserve the integrity of the original data, locate the most effective mapping, and obtain the best possible low-dimensional data. Preliminary findings suggest that QML models may offer advantages over classical models for classical data analysis. In this paper, a thorough investigation into generalization performance in QML is performed. This paper presents a brief survey on Qubits Encoding using Quantum Machine Learning models that help researchers to identify the limitations of the existing models and to design new efficient models for better performance levels.
Quantum machine learning has received significant interest in recent years, with theoretical studies showing that quantum variants of classical machine learning algorithms can provide good generalization from small training data sizes. However, there are notably no strong theoretical insights about what makes a quantum circuit design better than another, and comparative studies between quantum equivalents have not been done for every type of classical layers or techniques crucial for classical machine learning. Particularly, the pooling layer within convolutional neural networks is a fundamental operation left to explore. Pooling mechanisms significantly improve the performance of classical machine learning algorithms by playing a key role in reducing input dimensionality and extracting clean features from the input data. In this work, an in-depth study of pooling techniques in hybrid quantum-classical convolutional neural networks (QCCNNs) for classifying 2D medical images is performed. The performance of four different quantum and hybrid pooling techniques is studied: mid-circuit measurements, ancilla qubits with controlled gates, modular quantum pooling blocks and qubit selection with classical postprocessing. We find similar or better performance in comparison to an equivalent classical model and QCCNN without pooling and conclude that it is promising to study architectural choices in QCCNNs in more depth for future applications.
The way in which classical data are encoded into quantum states plays a significant role in both classification performance and quantum circuit complexity in Quantum Machine Learning. In this study, the effects of different quantum feature encoding strategies on Quantum Support Vector Machine performance were investigated using five binary classification datasets. In particular, the statistical relationships between features were incorporated into quantum circuits through RY(θ) and controlled-RY(θ) gates, and this approach was compared with conventional quantum feature maps. The results demonstrate that incorporating statistical relationships into the encoding process can influence classification performance. However, more complex and densely entangled circuits do not necessarily yield higher performance. In addition, a composite evaluation metric was employed to jointly assess predictive performance, generalization, and circuit cost. The findings across the five datasets indicate that the choice of quantum feature encoding strategy should account for the underlying structure of the data and that predictive performance should be evaluated together with quantum circuit complexity.