A quantum-search-based multi-classifier for image recognition

Abstract

The multi-class classification of images is a pivotal challenge within the realm of image processing. As the volume of visual data continues to expand, there is a burgeoning interest in harnessing the unique capabilities of quantum computation to augment the efficiency of classification tasks. However, many existing methods for training quantum image multi-classifiers parallel classical machine learning techniques, where the requisite circuit measurements increase linearly with the volume of training data. This work introduces a novel approach for training a quantum image multi-classifier based on the quantum search algorithm. We have meticulously conducted rigorous experiments on a handwritten digit dataset, a classic benchmark in the field. The results have been meticulously compared with previous works, and the comparative analysis not only validates the efficiency of our proposed approach, requiring only O(N/b) measurements during training, but also highlights a significant quadratic speedup of the algorithm.