In order to solve the high complexity of classical image processing, a quantum scheme for image sharpness estimation based on the Laplacian operator is proposed. The mean of grayscale gradients of all pixels is regarded as the sharpness estimation metric. A new quantum image representation model is presented by extending the Novel Enhanced Quantum Representation (NEQR) model, which is greatly useful for quantum image convolution. In quantum platforms, it has been shown that the mean calculation of numbers is rather difficult because the numbers are stored in a quantum superposition state. In order to solve this problem, we put forward an algorithm which essential idea is cyclically shifting the superposition state and iteratively calculating the mean of the new one and the original state. The mean can be obtained from the superposition state by only one quantum measurement. By analyzing the space complexity and time complexity, the scheme is far superior to classical ones in terms of resource consumption and execution speed. In addition, the results of simulation experiments show that for noiseless images, the performance of the scheme is consistent with subjective visual perception of images sharpness.
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