Image processing using quantum computing

According to the principles of quantum physics, the computing power of a quantum machine is immense compared to that of a classical one. Encouraged by this idea important applications of quantum computation to computer science have been developed (e.g. faster algorithms, secure transmissions). In this paper we investigate the implications of using quantum computing systems in the field of image processing. We consider basic gray level transformations such as image negatives, binarization, histogram computation and histogram equalization and show how these operations can be expressed using the quantum formalism. Moreover, we show how the efficient exploitation of the special properties of quantum computation leads to better performance for the proposed quantum operations as compared to the classical correspondents.