Abstract With the significant enhancement of quantum computing capabilities and their expanding applications in various fields, quantum image processing combined with quantum computing has become a key area of research in quantum computing, holding important theoretical value. In the face of the challenges posed by the digital information era, image classification technology demands higher standards from machine learning algorithms in terms of accuracy, computational speed, generalization capability, and complexity. This paper studies a series of quantum data encoding methods and parametric quantum circuit architectures, and proposes the application of Hybrid Hierarchical Encoding (HHE) and Hybrid Quantum Convolutional Neural Network (HQCNN). The new encoding method HHE integrates the benefits of angle encoding and enhances the hybrid amplitude encoding design to achieve optimal classification performance without compromising the depth of quantum circuits.HQCNN demonstrates outstanding classification performance and remarkable control over model complexity by leveraging the data processing capabilities of classical convolution and the complex computational power of quantum convolution. Experimental results show that HHE and HQCNN achieve better classification accuracy on the MNIST and Fashion-MNIST datasets compared to traditional classical CNN models, particularly when the number of parameters is significantly reduced.
Abstract With the significant enhancement of quantum computing capabilities and their expanding applications in various fields, quantum image processing combined with quantum computing has become a key area of research in quantum computing, holding important theoretical value. In the face of the challenges posed by the digital information era, image classification technology demands higher standards from machine learning algorithms in terms of accuracy, computational speed, generalization capability, and complexity. This paper studies a series of quantum data encoding methods and parametric quantum circuit architectures, and proposes the application of Hybrid Hierarchical Encoding (HHE) and Hybrid Quantum Convolutional Neural Network (HQCNN). The new encoding method HHE integrates the benefits of angle encoding and enhances the hybrid amplitude encoding design to achieve optimal classification performance without compromising the depth of quantum circuits.HQCNN demonstrates outstanding classification performance and remarkable control over model complexity by leveraging the data processing capabilities of classical convolution and the complex computational power of quantum convolution. Experimental results show that HHE and HQCNN achieve better classification accuracy on the MNIST and Fashion-MNIST datasets compared to traditional classical CNN models, particularly when the number of parameters is significantly reduced.
Abstract Quantum Neural Networks (QNNs) present a promising research direction in image recognition, demonstrating significant potential for various applications. However, QNNs with a fixed circuit topology structure are prone to encountering the barren plateaus during training when processing exponential number of qubits, which limit their performance and scalability. In this paper, a novel Hybrid Quantum-Classical Inception-inspired Convolutional Neural Networks (HQCNN) is proposed. The HQCNN enhances feature learning capability and mitigates the barren plateau issue by integrating quantum convolutional kernels with diverse circuit topologies across multiple channels. The architecture employs an amplitude encoding layer to map multi-channel classical data into quantum states, followed by diverse quantum convolutional kernels that extract feature representations. Furthermore, Hadamard gates are used to intergrate multi-channel features and incorporate quantum pooling to reduce feature dimensionality, with a fully connected layer mapping the quantum-enhancing features into class labels for classification tasks. Finally, by analyzing the influence of the circuit structures and quantum gate combinations on the models' performance, the optimal HQCNN architecture is constructed. Experimental results demonstrate that HQCNN achieves 98.5% accuracy on the MNIST-4 classification task and 92.5% accuracy on the MNIST-10 classification task, which indicates that the proposed model outperforms state-of-the-art HQCNN models and classical CNN in image classification with about 10% parameters. This study provides an effective approach for alleviating the barren plateau issue and designing multi-channel quantum convolutional neural networks for processing big classic data with fewer quantum resources.
Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are extensively utilized for image classification due to their ability to exploit data correlations effectively. However, traditional CNNs encounter several challenges, including limitations in accuracy improvement, computational efficiency, explain ability, and generalization. As data dimensionality or model complexity increases, CNNs often become more difficult to train efficiently, leading to slower processing times. To overcome these challenges, Quantum Convolutional Neural Networks (QCNNs) offer a promising quantum-based approach to enhance existing models, particularly by improving training efficiency and reducing processing times. This paper provides a comparative analysis of classical CNNs and a novel quantum circuit architecture tailored for image-based tasks. The analysis emphasizes the adaptability and potential of quantum circuits to enhance feature extraction, recognition accuracy, and processing efficiency.We applied various QCNN architectures to the Chinese-MNIST dataset and compared their performance with traditional CNN models. Although QCNNs achieved slightly lower accuracy, they demonstrated significantly greater stability. These findings high- light QCNNs’ potential to overcome the computational limitations of conventional deep learning, offering a promising pathway for quantum-enhanced solutions in computer vision. Future work will focus on refining quantum circuit designs, developing hybrid quantum-classical models, and extending QCNN applications to larger and more diverse datasets.
The growing complexity and scale of image processing tasks challenge classical convolutional neural networks (CNNs) with high computational costs. Hybrid quantum-classical convolutional neural networks (HQCNNs) show potential to improve performance by accelerating processing speed, enhancing classification accuracy, and reducing model parameters, though studies have primarily focused on the RGB color space. However, the effectiveness of HQCNNs in non-RGB color spaces, such as Lab, YCrCb, and HSV, remains largely unexplored. We propose an HQCNN to evaluate image classification across diverse color spaces. The HQCNN integrates parameterized quantum circuits (PQCs) with a classical CNN, leveraging quantum entanglement and trainable gates to enhance expressiveness across varied color representations. We assess performance on MNIST, CIFAR-10, EuroSAT, and SAT-4 datasets. Experimental results demonstrate that the HQCNN outperforms the classical CNN across all tested color spaces for the ten-class MNIST task, achieving a best accuracy of 94.3% in Lab compared to 92.8% in RGB for the CNN, with superior performance on other datasets in various color spaces. These findings highlight the potential of non-RGB color spaces and optimized PQC designs to improve classification performance. We provide new insights for advancing hybrid quantum-classical computer vision through optimized PQC architectures and diverse color space applications.
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in leveraging the unique properties of quantum computing to develop novel machine learning algorithms and architectures. This research paper presents an investigation of quantum convolutional neural networks (QCNNs), which leverage the unique properties of quantum computing to potentially improve the accuracy and efficiency of image classification tasks. Specifically, the paper explores three different QCNN architectures, including a pure quantum-based QCNN, a hybrid QCNN with a single quantum convolution layer, and a hybrid convolutional architecture with multiple quantum filters. We tested the models on MNIST dataset and the results of the study demonstrate that hybrid architectures that combine quantum and classical processing are more effective than pure quantum-based architectures in image classification tasks. In particular, the third model, the Hybrid Convolution with Multiple Quantum Filters, achieved the highest test set accuracy of 92.7%. The use of multiple quantum filters in conjunction with a classical neural network resulted in enhanced accuracy and efficiency in image classification tasks, highlighting the potential of hybrid architectures for future applications in machine learning tasks.
Abstract Quantum neural networks have emerged as a promising approach to solving complex problems across various domains, especially when integrated with classical methods. Several hybrid quantum-classical architectures have been developed to leverage the potential of quantum advantages for image classification tasks. The design of the quantum layer plays an important role in exploiting quantum properties such as superposition and entanglement. In this research, we propose hybrid quantum neural networks with multiple quantum layers, utilizing sequential circuits for enhanced feature representation through structured depth, and non-sequential circuits to reduce complexity and improve performance. Our experimental results demonstrate that stacking multiple layers in the quantum circuit enhances performance significantly. Furthermore, the results indicate that the optimal range of 6–10 qubits achieves the best trade-off between accuracy and computational efficiency. The results also show that amplitude embedding consistently outperformed angle embedding for image classification tasks. Notably, our proposed hybrid sequential model with amplitude embedding outperforms traditional convolutional neural networks on MNIST and Fashion-MNIST datasets, while requiring fewer parameters. These findings provide valuable insights for advancing quantum machine learning in real-world applications.
Quantum machine learning is emerging as a promising frontier at the intersection of quantum computing and Artificial Intelligence, offering potential gains in speed, efficiency, and robustness. In this paper, a hybrid Quantum Convolutional Neural Network (QCNN) architecture is presented for visual pattern recognition tasks, leveraging quantum superposition and entanglement for enhanced feature extraction. Unlike previous studies that focus on small-scale or simplified datasets, this study systematically evaluates QCNNs across multiple benchmark datasets and provides a direct comparison with classical CNNs, highlighting practical quantum advantages such as parameter efficiency and noise-resilience. The proposed approach encodes classical image data from benchmark datasets, including70K28×28grayscale images from MNIST and FashionMNIST, and60Kdownsampled grayscale CIFAR-10 images, into quantum states using amplitude encoding, followed by hierarchical quantum convolution and pooling layers implemented via parametrised quantum circuits (PQCs). The model culminates in a classical dense layer for final classification. Experimental results demonstrate that the QCNN achieves competitive performance on low-dimensional grayscale datasets with 93.2 % accuracy on MNIST and 88.5% on Fashion MNIST, though it underperforms on more complex datasets like CIFAR-10 with 67.8 % accuracy due to current quantum hardware limitations. While not yet surpassing classical CNNs in raw accuracy, the proposed QCNN exhibits notable parameter efficiency, noise resilience, and theoretical potential for energy-efficient computation, highlighting its promise for future applications as quantum technologies mature.