Quantum Model Parallelism for MRI-Based Classification of Alzheimer's Disease Stages

Abstract

With increasing life expectancy, AD has become a major global health concern. While classical AI-based methods have been developed for early diagnosis and stage classification of AD, growing data volumes and limited computational resources necessitate faster, more efficient approaches. Quantum-based AI methods, which leverage superposition and entanglement principles along with high-dimensional Hilbert space, can surpass classical approaches' limitations and offer higher accuracy for high-dimensional, heterogeneous, and noisy data. In this study, a Quantum-Based Parallel Model (QBPM) architecture is proposed for the efficient classification of AD stages using MRI datasets, inspired by the principles of classical model parallelism. The proposed model leverages quantum advantages by employing two distinct quantum circuits, each incorporating rotational and entanglement blocks, running in parallel on the same quantum simulator. The classification performance of the model was evaluated on two different datasets to assess its overall robustness and generalization capability. The proposed model demonstrated high classification accuracy across both datasets, highlighting its overall robustness and generalization capability. Results obtained under high-level Gaussian noise, simulating real-world conditions, further provided experimental evidence for the model's applicability not only in theoretical but also in practical scenarios. Moreover, compared with five different classical transfer learning methods, the proposed model demonstrated its efficiency as an alternative to classical approaches by achieving higher classification accuracy and comparable execution time while utilizing fewer circuit parameters. The results indicate that the proposed QBPM architecture represents an innovative and powerful approach for the classification of stages in complex diseases such as Alzheimer's.