Machine learning is being increasingly used for the detection, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer. However, models often struggle with biological data due to high dimensionality, limited sample diversity, and complex feature interactions. Recent works have investigated the potential for quantum machine learning models to exhibit improved performance over classical models on this kind of complex data, but have often lacked rigorous empirical evaluation of quantum advantage. In this work, we develop a methodology for fair benchmarking of quantum and classical machine learning models, based on the Red Cedar quantum machine learning and resource estimation framework and AutoML-optimized classical neural networks. We assess the potential for quantum advantage in machine learning across tabular, omics, and spatial oncological datasets drawn from the existing quantum machine learning literature, with a range of preprocessing methods, and find no evidence of quantum advantage. Our results suggest that the field should prioritize analyzing higher-dimensional, more biologically realistic datasets to make meaningful progress toward practical quantum advantage in oncological classification problems.
Machine learning is being increasingly used for the detection, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer. However, models often struggle with biological data due to high dimensionality, limited sample diversity, and complex feature interactions. Recent works have investigated the potential for quantum machine learning models to exhibit improved performance over classical models on this kind of complex data, but have often lacked rigorous empirical evaluation of quantum advantage. In this work, we develop a methodology for fair benchmarking of quantum and classical machine learning models, based on the Red Cedar quantum machine learning and resource estimation framework and AutoML-optimized classical neural networks. We assess the potential for quantum advantage in machine learning across tabular, omics, and spatial oncological datasets drawn from the existing quantum machine learning literature, with a range of preprocessing methods, and find no evidence of quantum advantage. Our results suggest that the field should prioritize analyzing higher-dimensional, more biologically realistic datasets to make meaningful progress toward practical quantum advantage in oncological classification problems.
Quantum machine learning (QML) has emerged as a promising approach for analyzing the complex, high-dimensional data encountered in oncology, yet research in this area remains fragmented. This systematic literature review synthesizes current applications of QML in cancer care. Following PRISMA guidelines, six databases were searched for peer-reviewed English-language studies published between 2020 and 2026. Of the 212 records identified, 49 studies met the inclusion criteria after screening and quality assessment. The findings show that QML research is dominated by classification and detection tasks, while segmentation is beginning to emerge. Breast cancer and brain tumors are the most frequently investigated domains. Hybrid quantum-classical models, particularly quantum kernel methods, quantum neural networks, and quantum convolutional neural networks, are the predominant approaches. The main barriers to adoption are hardware limitations, including quantum noise, limited qubit availability, and reliance on simulators. Overall, QML in oncology remains in its early stages of development, with limited clinical validation, insufficient model interpretability, and little evidence of a clear quantum advantage. Future research should prioritize evaluation on real quantum hardware, larger and more diverse clinical datasets, standardized benchmarking against classical methods, and closer collaboration between computer scientists and oncology experts to facilitate clinical translation.
Quantum machine learning has emerged as a promising paradigm that leverages quantum computational principles to potentially outperform classical approaches on specific learning tasks. This paper presents a comprehensive empirical investigation comparing Quantum Machine Learning (QML), specifically Quantum Support Vector Machines (QSVM) against Classical Machine Learning (CML) baselines including Logistic Regression, K Nearest Neighbors and classical SVMs. We implement quantum kernel methods using variational quantum circuits with angle embedding, IQP and ZZ feature maps on datasets exhibiting varying structural complexity. Our experiments on synthetic quantum generated datasets (Quantum Parity, Quantum Entanglement, Quantum Interference) demonstrate that QSVM achieves superior classification accuracy with improvements ranging from 2.9 % to 60 % over the best classical baselines achieving a 55.6 % overall win rate. Notably, on the Quantum Parity dataset, QSVM consistently outperformed all classical models across multiple configurations. On real-world benchmark datasets (Breast Cancer, Iris, Wine), QSVM Angle achieved 88% accuracy on Breast Cancer compared to 76% for classical SVM Linear a 15.8 % relative improvement while matching the best classical performance on Iris(100%)and Wine(92%). All experiments were conducted using quantum circuit simulation on classical hardware. These results provide empirical evidence that quantum kernel methods offer meaningful advantages over classical approaches on datasets with complex feature interactions. We discuss the theoretical foundations of these improvements including quantum feature space expressivity and kernel alignment.
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.
Breast cancer is a major health concern, and early detection can make a great difference in treatment and survival rates for breast cancer patients. Machine learning methods have noticeably improved prediction accuracy on high-dimensional medical datasets and have become widely used tools in medical diagnostics. The transition to a quantum computational framework has opened new directions in machine learning research. By using qubits instead of classical bits, quantum models may provide new ways to represent and process complex medical data. In medical diagnostics, this has led to a growing interest in whether quantum approaches can improve classification performance more effectively than classical methods. The purpose of this paper is to compare classical and quantum machine learning models on the task of breast cancer classification and to determine whether quantum models can achieve higher accuracy and faster prediction on a selected dataset. Alongside the main simulator-based experiment, a smaller experiment was performed on a real IBM quantum computer to demonstrate the practical execution of the same task under current hardware constraints. In the practical part of the study, the Wisconsin Diagnostic Breast Cancer (WDBC) dataset was used. This dataset consists of 569 samples with 30 numerical features extracted from digitized fine needle aspirate images and provides a reliable basis for evaluating model performance. A comparative analysis was conducted between classical and quantum machine learning models, including a support vector machine (SVM), an artificial neural network (ANN), a quantum support vector machine (QSVM), and a hybrid quantum-classical neural network (QNN). In the simulator-based experiment, both SVM and ANN achieved an accuracy of 0.956 with an F1-score of 0.965 on the test set, while QSVM reached an accuracy of 0.807 with an F1-score of 0.866 and the Hybrid QNN achieved 0.623 accuracy with an F1-score of 0.677. These quantum and hybrid models also required substantially longer training times than the classical baselines. A small hardware experiment on an IBM quantum device further illustrates both the practical feasibility and the current limitations of executing this classification task on noisy intermediate-scale quantum hardware.
Quantum Machine Learning (QML) has emerged as an interdisciplinary field that harnesses the potential of quantum computing to revolutionize classical machine learning paradigms. This paper presents a benchmarking study focused on four quantum classifier algorithms: Quantum Support Vector Classifier (QSVC), Variational Quantum Circuit (VQC), Quantum Neural Network Classifier (QNNC) and Pegasos Quantum Support Vector Classifier (PegasosQSVC). These quantum classifiers hold promise for unlocking quantum advantages in classification tasks. However, a systematic assessment of their performance across diverse datasets is yet to be fully explored. In this research study, we evaluate and compare the classification performance of quantum machine learning classifiers on various datasets (Breast Cancer, Diabetes, and Titanic) and compare them to a classical model. Our findings revealed that PegasosQSVC consistently maintained high performance across all datasets with the highest average accuracy, recall, and F1-score values of 0.81, 0.72, and 0.71, respectively, followed by VQC, followed by VQC, while QSVC and QNNC perform variably. Nevertheless, QSVC was found to balance performance and training time, achieving an average accuracy of 0.81 and a training time of 177 seconds. Overall, the classical model surpassed QML models as it was up to 10% higher in average accuracy.
The incorporation of quantum ansatz with machine learning classification models demonstrates the ability to extract patterns from data for classification tasks. However, to take the computational advantage of quantum machine learning, researchers have to deal with various constraints. In this paper, we focus on constraints like finding suitable datasets where quantum advantage is achievable and evaluating the relevance of features chosen by classical and quantum methods. Additionally, we compare quantum and classical approaches using benchmarks and estimate the computational complexity of quantum circuits to assess real-world usability. For our experimental validation, we selected the gene expression dataset, given the critical role of genetic variations in regulating physiological behavior and disease susceptibility. Through this study, we aim to improve quantum machine learning methods and provide useful insights into how they can help solve complex classification problems in different fields.