Quantum Transfer Learning for Diagnosis of Diabetic Retinopathy

India is on track to become the world’s diabetes capital thus demanding accurate diagnosis of Diabetic retinopathy from optical coherence tomography (OCT) retinal images. Accurate and faster diagnosis is difficult as it depends on quality of image, operator handling and also the growing number of patients. In this paper we propose the use of quantum transfer learning model to accomplish diagnosis of Diabetic Retinopathy. Quantum Transfer Learning (QTL), is a hybrid combination of classical transfer learning and quantum computing. Unlike classical computers, quantum computers provide faster computation and better accuracy. The concept of QTL is mainly used where the dataset size is limited. The QTL model, diagnostically significant image features are extracted with Resnet18 Convolutional Neural NEtwork (CNN) model, which is reduced to 4-bit feature vector to be encoded as qubit and is finally classified by utilizing Variational Quantum Circuit (VQC). The proposed model gave a better accuracy than existing state of the art methods in terms of high accuracy despite with a smaller set of images in the training phase.