Machine learning has exploded in popularity in recent years with applications on a wide range of tasks. However, this has often been achieved by scaling compute resources, which has its limits. To further improve these systems both in performance and efficiency it is worth investigating other approaches. One such approach is quantum machine learning. Using quantum mechanics it is possible to more efficiently solve certain problems, and the hope is for it to transfer into machine learning as well. An important part of quantum machine learning is the feature map: the function that converts classical data into quantum data. This study investigated the impact of the choice of feature map on binary classification performance, for quantum support vector machines. By controlling multiple parameters of generated datasets, as well as comparing with real-world datasets, it is possible to learn how different aspects affect feature maps. There were clear differences in performance, with the angle and IQP feature maps generally performing well, while the amplitude for example did not. However the best performing feature map depended on the dataset, for example the angle entangled feature map performed the best on the high overlap dataset, while it was not for the low overlap dataset. It is therefore important to adapt the choice of feature map based on the dataset used. When comparing with a classical baseline it can be concluded that the unique mechanics of quantum circuits sometimes allow the models to achieve higher performance than classical models. This indicates that quantum machine learning is a useful research direction.
Machine learning has exploded in popularity in recent years with applications on a wide range of tasks. However, this has often been achieved by scaling compute resources, which has its limits. To further improve these systems both in performance and efficiency it is worth investigating other approaches. One such approach is quantum machine learning. Using quantum mechanics it is possible to more efficiently solve certain problems, and the hope is for it to transfer into machine learning as well. An important part of quantum machine learning is the feature map: the function that converts classical data into quantum data. This study investigated the impact of the choice of feature map on binary classification performance, for quantum support vector machines. By controlling multiple parameters of generated datasets, as well as comparing with real-world datasets, it is possible to learn how different aspects affect feature maps. There were clear differences in performance, with the angle and IQP feature maps generally performing well, while the amplitude for example did not. However the best performing feature map depended on the dataset, for example the angle entangled feature map performed the best on the high overlap dataset, while it was not for the low overlap dataset. It is therefore important to adapt the choice of feature map based on the dataset used. When comparing with a classical baseline it can be concluded that the unique mechanics of quantum circuits sometimes allow the models to achieve higher performance than classical models. This indicates that quantum machine learning is a useful research direction.
The support vector machine algorithm with a quantum kernel estimator (QSVM-Kernel), as a leading example of a quantum machine learning technique, has undergone significant advancements. Nevertheless, its integration with classical data presents unique challenges. While quantum computers primarily interact with data in quantum states, embedding classical data into quantum states using feature mapping techniques is essential for leveraging quantum algorithms Despite the recognized importance of feature mapping, its specific impact on data classification outcomes remains largely unexplored. This study addresses this gap by comprehensively assessing the effects of various feature mapping methods on classification results, taking medical data analysis as a case study. In this study, the QSVM-Kernel method was applied to classification problems in two different and publicly available medical datasets, namely, the Wisconsin Breast Cancer (original) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) Glioma datasets. In the QSVM-Kernel algorithm, quantum kernel matrices obtained from 9 different quantum feature maps were used. Thus, the effects of these quantum feature maps on the classification results of the QSVM-Kernel algorithm were examined in terms of both classifier performance and total execution time. As a result, in the Wisconsin Breast Cancer (original) and TCGA Glioma datasets, when Rx and Ry rotational gates were used, respectively, as feature maps in the QSVM-Kernel algorithm, the best classification performances were achieved both in terms of classification performance and total execution time. The contributions of this study are that (1) it highlights the significant impact of feature mapping techniques on medical data classification outcomes using the QSVM-Kernel algorithm, and (2) it also guides undertaking research for improved QSVM classification performance.
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.
In this article, we investigate the applicability of quantum machine learning for classification tasks using two quantum classifiers from the Qiskit Python environment: the variational quantum circuit and the quantum kernel estimator (QKE). We provide a first evaluation on the performance of these classifiers when using a hyperparameter search on six widely known and publicly available benchmark datasets and analyze how their performance varies with the number of samples on two artificially generated test classification datasets. As quantum machine learning is based on unitary transformations, this paper explores data structures and application fields that could be particularly suitable for quantum advantages. Hereby, this paper introduces a novel dataset based on concepts from quantum mechanics using the exponential map of a Lie algebra. This dataset will be made publicly available and contributes a novel contribution to the empirical evaluation of quantum supremacy. We further compared the performance of VQC and QKE on six widely applicable datasets to contextualize our results. Our results demonstrate that the VQC and QKE perform better than basic machine learning algorithms, such as advanced linear regression models (Ridge and Lasso). They do not match the accuracy and runtime performance of sophisticated modern boosting classifiers such as XGBoost, LightGBM, or CatBoost. Therefore, we conclude that while quantum machine learning algorithms have the potential to surpass classical machine learning methods in the future, especially when physical quantum infrastructure becomes widely available, they currently lag behind classical approaches. Our investigations also show that classical machine learning approaches have superior performance classifying datasets based on group structures, compared to quantum approaches that particularly use unitary processes. Furthermore, our findings highlight the significant impact of different quantum simulators, feature maps, and quantum circuits on the performance of the employed quantum estimators. This observation emphasizes the need for researchers to provide detailed explanations of their hyperparameter choices for quantum machine learning algorithms, as this aspect is currently overlooked in many studies within the field. To facilitate further research in this area and ensure the transparency of our study, we have made the complete code available in a linked GitHub repository.
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.
Quantum-enhanced machine learning is a rapidly evolving field that aims to leverage the unique properties of quantum mechanics to enhance classical machine learning. However, the practical applicability of these methods remains an open question, particularly beyond the context of specifically crafted toy problems, and given the current limitations of quantum hardware. This study focuses on quantum kernel methods in the context of classification tasks. In particular, it examines the performance of quantum kernel estimation and quantum kernel training (QKT) in connection with two quantum feature mappings, namely, ZZFeatureMap and CovariantFeatureMap. Remarkably, these feature maps have been proposed in the literature under the conjecture of possible near-term quantum advantage and have shown promising performance in ad hoc datasets. This study aims to evaluate their versatility and generalization capabilities in a more general benchmark, encompassing both artificial and established reference datasets. Classical machine learning methods, specifically support vector machines and logistic regression, are also incorporated as baseline comparisons. Experimental results indicate that quantum methods exhibit varying performance across different datasets. Despite outperforming classical methods in ad hoc datasets, mixed results are obtained for the general case among standard classical benchmarks. The experimental data call into question a general added value of applying QKT optimization, for which the additional computational cost does not necessarily translate into improved classification performance. Instead, it is suggested that a careful choice of the quantum feature map in connection with proper hyperparameterization may prove more effective.
This study explores the performance of Quantum Support Vector Classifiers (QSVCs) and Quantum Neural Networks (QNNs) in comparison to classical models for machine learning tasks. By evaluating these models on the Iris and MNIST-PCA datasets, we find that quantum models tend to outperform classical approaches as the problem complexity increases. While QSVCs generally provide more consistent results, QNNs exhibit superior performance in higher-complexity tasks due to their increased quantum load. Additionally, we analyze the impact of hyperparameter tuning, showing that feature maps and ansatz configurations significantly influence model accuracy. We also compare the PennyLane and Qiskit frameworks, concluding that Qiskit provides better optimization and efficiency for our implementation. These findings highlight the potential of Quantum Machine Learning (QML) for complex classification problems and provide insights into model selection and optimization strategies