A quantum-based image fidelity metric

A wholly quantum-based metric to assess fidelity between quantum images (QIFM) is proposed. Unlike traditional image quality measures, such as the PSNR metric, the proposed QIFM is formulated as a pixel difference-based measure whose design conforms to the intricacies inherent to quantum image processing (QIP). Results from simulation-based implementation of the QIFM suggest that it is a better technique to quantify fidelity between quantum images. By using m qubits to encode a strip containing multiple cover and test images (each encoded using an additional n qubits) the implementation of the proposed QIFM framework requires 326n basic quantum gates and 26m Toffoli gates to execute. The proposed metric has the potential to offer a better and more effective tool to assess fidelity between images in quantum watermarking, quantum movie aggregation and other applications in QIP.