Leveraging Quantum Machine Learning to Address Class Imbalance: A Novel Approach for Enhanced Predictive Accuracy

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

The class imbalance problem presents a critical challenge in real-world applications, particularly in high-stakes domains such as healthcare, finance, disaster management, and fault diagnosis, where accurate anomaly detection is paramount. Class imbalance often disrupts the inherent symmetry of data distributions, resulting in suboptimal performance of traditional machine learning models. Conventional approaches such as undersampling and oversampling are commonly employed to address this issue; however, these methods can introduce additional asymmetries, including information loss and overfitting, which ultimately compromise model efficacy. This study introduces an innovative approach leveraging quantum machine learning (QML), specifically the Variational Quantum Classifier (VQC), to restore and capitalize on the symmetrical properties of data distributions without relying on resampling techniques. By employing quantum circuits optimized to mitigate the asymmetries inherent in imbalanced datasets, the proposed method demonstrates consistently superior performance across diverse datasets, with notable improvements in Recall for minority classes. These findings underscore the potential of quantum machine learning as a robust alternative to classical methods, offering a symmetry-aware solution to class imbalance and advancing QML-driven technologies in fields where equitable representation and symmetry are of critical importance.