A Hybrid Quantum–Classical Network for Eye-Written Digit Recognition

Eye-written digit recognition presents a promising alternative communication method for individuals affected by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. However, the development of robust models in this field is limited by the availability of datasets, due to the complex and unstable procedure of collecting eye-written samples. Previous work has proposed both conventional techniques and deep neural networks to classify eye-written digits, achieving moderate to high accuracy with variability across runs. In this study, we explore the potential of quantum machine learning by presenting a hybrid quantum–classical model that integrates a variational quantum circuit into a classical deep neural network architecture. While classical models already achieve strong performance, this work examines the potential of quantum-enhanced models to achieve such performance with fewer parameters and greater expressive capacity. To further improve robustness and stability, we employ an ensemble strategy that aggregates predictions from multiple trained instances of the hybrid model. This study serves as a proof-of-concept to evaluate the feasibility of incorporating a compact 4-qubit quantum circuit within a lightweight hybrid model. The proposed model achieves 98.52% accuracy with a standard deviation of 1.99, supporting the potential of combining quantum and classical computing for assistive communication technologies and encouraging further research in quantum biosignal interpretation and human–computer interaction.