A Quantum-Classical Hybrid Method for Image Classification and Segmentation

Enormous activity in the Quantum Computing area has resulted in it being considered, together with classical computers, for solving different difficult problems - including those of applied nature. An attempt is made in this work to assemble a pipeline consisting of both quantum and classical processing blocks for the task of image classification and segmentation, keeping in mind the present limitations of the gate-model quantum computers. It is based on the work done for the recent BMW Quantum Computing Challenge related to Automotive Industry. The pipeline handles the real-life sized images as the input and output, rather than the toy-sized examples prevalent in Quantum Computing literature. Apart from breaking down the problem to modules, some of which can be accommodated in the existing simulators and hardware, simplifications of the relevant quantum algorithms are also carried out. Its functionality and utility are brought out by applying it to surface crack segmentation on the popular Kaggle Surface Crack Detection data set. The results of the paper are not only limited to simulations, but also involve running models on Noisy, Intermediate-Scale Quantum processors through AWS. In its entirety, this work may lay the groundwork for quantum/quantum-enhanced image segmentation, and providing interested researchers with a stepping-stone in that direction, as the results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed method, even with simple versions of the quantum modules.