Hybrid quantum convolutional neural network with differential privacy for image classification

Quantum convolutional neural networks hold potential advantages for image recognition by exploiting unique quantum properties. However, their training processes remain susceptible to privacy leakage. To address this issue, we propose a hybrid quantum convolutional neural network (HQCNN) model with differential privacy. This architecture utilizes quantum superposition and entanglement to efficiently extract image features. To ensure differential privacy, Gaussian noise is added to the parameter gradients. Crucially, the superior feature extraction and learning capabilities of the HQCNN are utilized to mitigate the performance degradation typically induced by noise injection. Experiments on the MNIST and Fashion-MNIST datasets demonstrate that the proposed model achieves a test accuracy exceeding 95% under a strict privacy budget of ɛ 1.04. Furthermore, evaluations on the CIFAR-10 dataset confirm the feasibility of the model in the differentially private scenario. Comparative analyses further validate that the proposed model preserves privacy while maintaining superior performance in differentially private training.