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Edge detection is a fundamental task in digital image processing. Marr–Hildreth edge detection is the basic tool for implementing edge detection in classic image processing. This paper studies the quantum version of the classical Marr–Hildreth edge detection, which includes two core processes: Gaussian–Laplacian filtering and zero-crossing extraction. Based on the sampling results of the Gaussian–Laplace function, Gaussian–Laplacian filtering is implemented directly using quantum multipliers and quantum adders. Zero-crossing extraction is achieved using several quantum comparators. The quantum circuits of these two core processes with several auxiliary operators are designed in detail. Complexity analysis shows that the quantum Marr–Hildreth edge detection has exponential speedup compared to its classical counterpart. The simulation on the classical computer verifies the correctness of the quantum Marr–Hildreth edge detection results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a design method of quantum circuits for threshold segmentation of gray-scale image is proposed, which is a quantum counterpart of classical optimum global thresholding using Otsu's method. First, we design a quantum circuit to obtain the histogram of the pixels distribution. Then, on this basis, we design the quantum circuits of some sub-modules, such as the cumulative histogram, cumulative mean, multiplication, division, the between-class variance and so on. Finally, all the between-class variances corresponding to each gray-level are sorted. At this time, the gray-level corresponding to the maximum of the between-class variance is the Otsu's threshold. For all the operations involved in the classical Otsu's threshold selection, we designed the corresponding quantum circuits, analyzed the computational complexity, and verified the correctness of these circuits by simulations on classical computers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Image scaling is the basic operation that is widely used in classic image processing, including nearest-neighbor interpolation, bilinear interpolation, and bicubic interpolation. In quantum image processing (QIP), the research on image scaling is focused on nearest-neighbor interpolation, while the related research of bilinear interpolation is very rare, and that of bicubic interpolation has not been reported yet. In this study, a new method based on quantum Fourier transform (QFT) is designed for bilinear interpolation of images. Firstly, some basic functional modules are constructed, in which the new method based on QFT is adopted for the design of two core modules (i.e. addition and multiplication), and then these modules are used to design quantum circuits for the bilinear interpolation of images, including scaling-up and down. Finally, the complexity analysis of the scaling circuits based on the elementary gates is deduced. Simulation results show that the scaling image using bilinear interpolation is clearer than that using the nearest-neighbor interpolation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At present, the classical least-significant-bit (LSB) based image steganography has been extended to quantum image processing. For the existing LSB-based quantum image steganography schemes, the embedding capacity is no more than 3 bits per pixel. Therefore, it is meaningful to study how to improve the embedding capacity of quantum image steganography. This work presents a novel LSB-based steganography using reflected Gray code for colored quantum images, and the embedding capacity of this scheme is up to 4 bits per pixel. In proposed scheme, the secret qubit sequence is considered as a sequence of 4-bit segments. For the four bits in each segment, the first bit is embedded in the second LSB of B channel of the cover image, and and the remaining three bits are embedded in LSB of RGB channels of each color pixel simultaneously using reflected-Gray code to determine the embedded bit from secret information. Following the transforming rule, the LSB of stego-image are not always same as the secret bits and the differences are up to almost 50%. Experimental results confirm that the proposed scheme shows good performance and outperforms the previous ones currently found in the literature in terms of embedding capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In quantum image steganography, embedding capacity and security are two important issues. This paper presents a novel quantum steganography scheme using color images as cover images. First, the secret information is divided into 3-bit segments, and then each 3-bit segment is embedded into the LSB of one color pixel in the cover image according to its own value and using Gray code mapping rules. Extraction is the inverse of embedding. We designed the quantum circuits that implement the embedding and extracting process. The simulation results on a classical computer show that the proposed scheme outperforms several other existing schemes in terms of embedding capacity and security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To address quantum description for color images, an improved FRQI model called FRQCI is proposed in this paper. In our model, the qubit has two-phase parameters and , and the primary color R is stored in , the primary colors G and B are stored in . We provide several simple image processing operators, including color change and geometric transformation. Next, we focus on an encryption algorithm, which includes two parts: position scrambling and color transformation. All operations involved in this paper are implemented by the rotation of the qubit on the Bloch sphere. The simulation results on classical computer show the effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we investigate the use of quantum Fourier transform (QFT) in the field of image processing. We consider QFT-based color image filtering operations and their applications in image smoothing, sharpening, and selective filtering using quantum frequency domain filters. The underlying principle used for constructing the proposed quantum filters is to use the principle of the quantum Oracle to implement the filter function. Compared with the existing methods, our method is not only suitable for color images, but also can flexibly design the notch filters. We provide the quantum circuit that implements the filtering task and present the results of several simulation experiments on color images. The major advantages of the quantum frequency filtering lies in the exploitation of the efficient implementation of the quantum Fourier transform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigated the quantum image spatial filtering, and focused on the design method of quantum weighted averaging filter and its application in image de-noising. To this end, we first designed the quantum circuits for some auxiliary modules, such as swapping two numbers, comparing two numbers, computing the weighted average of some integers, etc. Next, we constructed a weighted averaging filter of size 3 × 3 using auxiliary modules. The spatial filtering directly on the image itself can be accomplished by using designed filter. We provided the quantum circuits that implements the filtering task and presented the results of several simulation experiments on some gray images with different noises. The significance of this paper is to explore the quantum realization method of image filtering in spatial domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a simple encryption scheme for quantum color image is proposed. Firstly, a color image is transformed into a quantum superposition state by employing NEQR (novel enhanced quantum representation), where the R,G,B values of every pixel in a 24-bit RGB true color image are represented by 24 single-qubit basic states, and each value has 8 qubits. Then, these 24 qubits are respectively transformed from a basic state into a balanced superposition state by employed the controlled rotation gates. At this time, the gray-scale values of R, G, B of every pixel are in a balanced superposition of 2 multi-qubits basic states. After measuring, the whole image is an uniform white noise, which does not provide any information. Decryption is the reverse process of encryption. The experimental results on the classical computer show that the proposed encryption scheme has better security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a novel quantum representation and watermarking scheme based on the controlled rotation of qubits are proposed. Firstly, a flexible representation for quantum color image (FRQCI) is proposed to facilitate the image processing tasks. Some basic image processing operations based on FRQCI representation are introduced. Then, a novel watermarking scheme for quantum images is presented. In our scheme, the carrier image is stored in the phase $$\theta $$ of a qubit; at the same time, the watermark image is embedded into the phase $$\phi $$ of a qubit, which will not affect the carrier image's visual effect. Before being embedded into the carrier image, the watermark image is scrambled to be seemingly meaningless using quantum circuits, which further ensures the security of the watermark image. All the operations mentioned above are implemented by the controlled rotation of qubits. The experimental results on the classical computer show that the proposed watermarking scheme has better visual quality under a higher embedding capacity and outperforms the existing schemes in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Morphological image processing is a relatively mature image processing method in classical image processing. However, in quantum image processing, the related results are still quite scarce. In this paper, we first design the quantum circuits of the two basic operations of dilation and erosion for binary images and grayscale images. On this basis, for binary image, the quantum circuits of three morphological algorithms (noise removal, boundary extraction and skeleton extraction) are designed in detail. For grayscale image, the quantum circuits of three morphological algorithms (i.e., edge detection, image enhancement and texture segmentation) are also designed. In the design of these circuits, the parallelism of quantum computation is considered. The analysis of the circuits complexity shows that all the six morphological algorithms can speed up their classic counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]