Quantum Approach to Satellite Image Data Compression and Analysis

Due to the rapid development of satellite imaging sensors, high-resolution images are being generated for use. Various image processing algorithms, such as deep learning models, require images of reduced sizes given the computational constraints. Hence, preprocessing the images to reduce their size is crucial for any deep learning model. This paper proposes a novel approach to compress satellite images using quantum computing. A comparative study on different standard data embedding techniques used in quantum computing is undertaken. We propose four quantum compression techniques (𝑄𝐶𝑇s) by extending the unitary operations of amplitude encoding for compressing satellite images. The proposed methods provide exponential scaling as amplitude encoding is used, where 2^𝑛 classical data values are encoded into 𝑛 qubits. Compression performance, visual evaluation, and quality metric evaluation were carried out to assess the proposed compression techniques. Our experimental results showed that the crucial patterns in images are retained in the compressed images without quality loss even after 75% compression. The compressed images can be used for post-processing tasks such as classification using classical or quantum computing algorithms.