A Hybrid Quantum-Classical Approach for Multi-Class Skin Disease Classification Using a 4-Qubit Model

Quantum machine learning (QML) presents a promising avenue for addressing complex classification challenges, yet its application in medical imaging remains largely unexplored. This work introduces a hybrid quantum classical framework designed to classify skin diseases—Chickenpox, Measles, Monkeypox, and Normal—using a 4 qubit quantum system. The framework integrates a Quantum Convolutional Neural Network (QCNN) for feature extraction and a Variational Quantum Classifier (VQC) for classification, processing a dataset of 770 images with significant class imbalance. To address this imbalance, we employ a class weighted loss function with weights <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">w_yi</i> = [3.0, 3.5, 0.6, 0.4], ensuring balanced representation across all classes. The model is optimized using Simultaneous Perturbation Stochastic Approximation (SPSA) over 150 iterations, achieving a test accuracy of 70.13% on a subset of 154 images, which represents 20% of the dataset. This marks a substantial improvement over both a random baseline of 25% and a prior run that achieved 37.66% accuracy, which was skewed toward the majority class. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) reduces image features to a 4 dimensional representation, enabling compatibility with the quantum system. The QCNN extracts these features, while the VQC performs classification based on measurements from 1024 shots on the QASM simulator. To ensure practical reusability, the trained model—including quantum circuits, optimized parameters, and PCA transformations—is saved for future deployment. Validation on a separate set of 24 samples (6 per class) yields 70.83% accuracy (17 out of 24 correct predictions), demonstrating the model’s generalization capabilities. While the performance falls short of classical benchmarks, this study establishes the feasibility of QML with minimal qubits, paving the way for quantum driven diagnostics in resource constrained environments.