Towards Realising Secure and Efficient Image and Video Processing Applications on Quantum Computers

Abstract

Exploiting the promise of security and efficiency that quantum computing offers, the basic foundations leading to commercial applications for quantum image processing are proposed. Two mathematical frameworks and algorithms to accomplish the watermarking of quantum images, authentication of ownership of already watermarked images and recovery of their unmarked versions on quantum computers are proposed. Encoding the images as 2 n -sized normalised Flexible Representation of Quantum Images (FRQI) states, with n-qubits and 1-qubit dedicated to capturing the respective information about the colour and position of every pixel in the image respectively, the proposed algorithms utilise the flexibility inherent to the FRQI representation, in order to confine the transformations on an image to any predetermined chromatic or spatial (or a combination of both) content of the image as dictated by the watermark embedding, authentication or recovery circuits. Furthermore, by adopting an apt generalisation of the criteria required to realise physical quantum computing hardware, three standalone components that make up the framework to prepare, manipulate and recover the various contents required to represent and produce movies on quantum computers are also proposed. Each of the algorithms and the mathematical foundations for their execution were simulated using classical (i.e., conventional or non-quantum) computing resources, and their results were analysed alongside other longstanding classical computing equivalents. The work presented here, combined together with the extensions suggested, provide the basic foundations towards effectuating secure and efficient classical-like image and video processing applications on the quantum-computing framework. OPEN ACCESSEntropy 2013, 15 2875 Keywords: quantum computation; quantum image processing (QIP); quantum circuit; FRQI quantum image; quantum algorithm; quantum watermarking; quantum movie: quantum computing hardware; physical realisation of quantum computation

Quantum Computation-Based Image Representation, Processing Operations and Their Applications

“…A secure, keyless and blind watermarking and authentication strategy for images on quantum computers, WaQI, was first proposed in [35], enhanced in [33] and later reviewed in [51]. This strategy is credited with pioneering research in what is today emerging as quantum image watermarking.…”

“…Recently, novel methods for speeding-up certain tasks and interdisciplinary research between computer science and several other scientific fields are attracting the interest of scientists. Quantum computation is such a thriving and advancing field with a considerable number of evolutions in the past several decades [1,2]. In 1982, Feynman proposed a quantum physics-based computation model, named quantum computers, which could be more powerful than classical ones [3].…”

Quantum image processing: A review of advances in its security technologies

“…7 after seven years. However, the pioneering role of research that gave birth to what is today referred to as QIP 1 should be attributed to Venegas-Andraca and Bose's Qubit Lattice 8 description for quantum images in 2003. Following this, Lattorre proposed another kind of representation, called the Real Ket, 9 whose purpose was to encode quantum images as a basis for further applications in QIP.…”

“…1 It is primarily devoted to utilizing quantum computing technologies to capture, manipulate, and recover quantum images in di®erent formats and for di®erent purposes. 2 Due to some of the astounding properties inherent to quantum computation, notably entanglement and parallelism, it is anticipated that QIP technologies will o®er capabilities and performances that are, as yet, unrivaled by their traditional equivalents.…”

“…1,2 (2) Optics-based quantum imaging: These applications focus on devising novel techniques for optical imaging and parallel information processing at the quantum level by exploiting the quantum nature of light and the intrinsic parallelism of optical signals. 10 (3) Classically-inspired QIP: These applications derive their inspiration from the expectation that quantum computing hardware will soon be physically realized and, hence, such research focuses on extending classical image processing tasks and applications to quantum computing framework.…”