# Quanvolutional Neural Networks: Powering Image Recognition with Quantum Circuits

## TL;DR

This paper introduces quantum convolutional layers in neural networks, demonstrating that quantum transformations can improve image recognition accuracy and training speed on the MNIST dataset.

## Contribution

The work presents a novel quantum convolutional layer for neural networks, showing its potential benefits over classical CNNs in image recognition tasks.

## Key findings

- QNNs achieved higher accuracy than classical CNNs.
- QNNs trained faster than classical CNNs.
- Quantum transformations effectively extract features for classification.

## Abstract

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have rapidly risen in popularity for many machine learning applications, particularly in the field of image recognition. Much of the benefit generated from these networks comes from their ability to extract features from the data in a hierarchical manner. These features are extracted using various transformational layers, notably the convolutional layer which gives the model its name. In this work, we introduce a new type of transformational layer called a quantum convolution, or quanvolutional layer. Quanvolutional layers operate on input data by locally transforming the data using a number of random quantum circuits, in a way that is similar to the transformations performed by random convolutional filter layers. Provided these quantum transformations produce meaningful features for classification purposes, then the overall algorithm could be quite useful for near term quantum computing, because it requires small quantum circuits with little to no error correction. In this work, we empirically evaluated the potential benefit of these quantum transformations by comparing three types of models built on the MNIST dataset: CNNs, quantum convolutional neural networks (QNNs), and CNNs with additional non-linearities introduced. Our results showed that the QNN models had both higher test set accuracy as well as faster training compared to the purely classical CNNs.