arXiv · 2507.06642
Quantum algorithm for edge detection in digital grayscale images
Abstract
In this work, we propose a novel quantum algorithm for edge detection in digital grayscale images, based on the sequency-ordered Walsh-Hadamard transform. The proposed method significantly improves upon existing quantum techniques for edge detection by using a quantum algorithm for the sequency-ordered Walsh-Hadamard transform, achieving a circuit depth of $\mathcal{O}(n)$ (where $n$ is the number of qubits). This represents a notable enhancement over the Quantum Fourier Transform (QFT), which has a circuit depth of $\mathcal{O}(n^{2})$. Furthermore, our approach for edge detection has a computational cost (both gate complexity and quantum circuit depth) of $\mathcal{O}(\log_{2}(N_{1}N_{2}))$ for an image of size $N_{1}\times N_{2}$, offering a considerable improvement over the Quantum Hadamard Edge Detection (QHED) algorithm, which incurs a cost of $\mathcal{O}(\text{poly}(\log_{2}(N_{1}N_{2})))$. By integrating a quantum high-pass filter with the sequency-ordered Walsh-Hadamard transform, the algorithm effectively extracts edge information from images. Computational examples are provided to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed algorithm which provides a better performance in comparison to QHED.
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Mohit Rohida, Alok Shukla, Prakash Vedula. 2025-07-09. Quantum algorithm for edge detection in digital grayscale images. https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.06642
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