Generative Diffusion Augmentation with Quantum-Enhanced Discrimination for Medical Image Diagnosis

TL;DR

This paper introduces SDA-QEC, a novel framework combining diffusion-based data augmentation and quantum-enhanced feature discrimination to improve medical image diagnosis accuracy in highly imbalanced datasets.

Contribution

It presents an innovative integration of simplified diffusion augmentation with quantum feature layers within deep learning models for medical imaging.

Findings

Achieves over 98% accuracy, AUC, and F1-score on coronary angiography classification.

Balances sensitivity and specificity at 98.33%, enhancing clinical reliability.

Outperforms classical models like ResNet18 and DenseNet121 in imbalanced medical datasets.

Abstract

In biomedical engineering, artificial intelligence has become a pivotal tool for enhancing medical diagnostics, particularly in medical image classification tasks such as detecting pneumonia from chest X-rays and breast cancer screening. However, real-world medical datasets frequently exhibit severe class imbalance, where positive samples substantially outnumber negative samples, leading to biased models with low recall rates for minority classes. This imbalance not only compromises diagnostic accuracy but also poses clinical misdiagnosis risks. To address this challenge, we propose SDA-QEC (Simplified Diffusion Augmentation with Quantum-Enhanced Classification), an innovative framework that integrates simplified diffusion-based data augmentation with quantum-enhanced feature discrimination. Our approach employs a lightweight diffusion augmentor to generate high-quality synthetic samples for minority classes, rebalancing the training distribution. Subsequently, a quantum feature layer embedded within MobileNetV2 architecture enhances the model's discriminative capability through high-dimensional feature mapping in Hilbert space. Comprehensive experiments on coronary angiography image classification demonstrate that SDA-QEC achieves 98.33% accuracy, 98.78% AUC, and 98.33% F1-score, significantly outperforming classical baselines including ResNet18, MobileNetV2, DenseNet121, and VGG16. Notably, our framework simultaneously attains 98.33% sensitivity and 98.33% specificity, achieving a balanced performance critical for clinical deployment. The proposed method validates the feasibility of integrating generative augmentation with quantum-enhanced modeling in real-world medical imaging tasks, offering a novel research pathway for developing highly reliable medical AI systems in small-sample, highly imbalanced, and high-risk diagnostic scenarios.