Deep Neural Networks have offered numerous innovative solutions to brain-related diseases including Alzheimer’s. However, there are still a few standpoints in terms of diagnosis and planning that can be transformed via quantum Machine Learning (QML). In this study, we present a hybrid classical–quantum machine learning model for the detection of Alzheimer’s using 6400 labeled MRI scans with two classes. Hybrid classical–quantum transfer learning is used, which makes it possible to optimally pre-process complex and high-dimensional data. Classical neural networks extract high-dimensional features and embed informative feature vectors into a quantum processor. We use resnet34 to extract features from the image and feed a 512-feature vector to our quantum variational circuit (QVC) to generate a four-feature vector for precise decision boundaries. Adam optimizer is used to exploit the adaptive learning rate corresponding to each parameter based on first- and second-order gradients. Furthermore, to validate the model, different quantum simulators (PennyLane, qiskit.aer and qiskit.basicaer) are used for the detection of the demented and non-demented images. The learning rate is set to 10−4 for and optimized quantum depth of six layers, resulting in a training accuracy of 99.1% and a classification accuracy of 97.2% for 20 epochs. The hybrid classical–quantum network significantly outperformed the classical network, as the classification accuracy achieved by the classical transfer learning model was 92%. Thus, a hybrid transfer-learning model is used for binary detection, in which a quantum circuit improves the performance of a pre-trained ResNet34 architecture. Therefore, this work offers a method for selecting an optimal approach for detecting Alzheimer’s disease. The proposed model not only allows for the automated detection of Alzheimer’s but would also speed up the process significantly in clinical settings.

The classical neural network has provided remarkable results to diagnose neurological disorders against neuroimaging data. However, in terms of efficient and accurate classification, some standpoints need to be improved by utilizing high-speed computing tools. By integrating quantum computing phenomena with deep neural network approaches, this study proposes an AlexNet–quantum transfer learning method to diagnose neurodegenerative diseases using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) dataset. The hybrid model is constructed by extracting an informative feature vector from high-dimensional data using a classical pre-trained AlexNet model and further feeding this network to a quantum variational circuit (QVC). Quantum circuit leverages quantum computing phenomena, quantum bits, and different quantum gates such as Hadamard and CNOT gate for transformation. The classical pre-trained model extracts the 4096 features from the MRI dataset by using AlexNet architecture and gives this vector as input to the quantum circuit. QVC generates a 4-dimensional vector and to transform this vector into a 2-dimensional vector, a fully connected layer is connected at the end to perform the binary classification task for a brain disorder. Furthermore, the classical–quantum model employs the quantum depth of six layers on pennyLane quantum simulators, presenting the classification accuracy of 97% for Parkinson’s disease (PD) and 96% for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) for 25 epochs. Besides this, pre-trained classical neural models are implemented for the classification of disorder and then, we compare the performance of the classical transfer learning model and hybrid classical–quantum transfer learning model. This comparison shows that the AlexNet–quantum learning model achieves beneficial results for classifying PD and AD. So, this work leverages the high-speed computational power using deep network learning and quantum circuit learning to offer insight into the practical application of quantum computers that speed up the performance of the model on real-world data in the healthcare domain.