<b>QUANTUM FEATURE ENCODING FOR ENHANCING CNN-BASED IMAGE CLASSIFICATION PERFORMANCE </b><b></b>

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have exposed robust results for classifying images in data analytics. On the other hand, the effectiveness of these models is often limited by their substantial computational complexities, particularly when dealing with features represented in complex mathematical environments, multi class image classification, and especially when dealing with complex nonlinear relationships between features, which need to be addressed for transparent decision-making processes. This study developed a Quantum-Enhanced Convolutional Neural Network (Q-CNN) model, which incorporates traditional convolution-based feature extraction, Quantum Feature Encoding, and quantum processing. The developed model applies a quantum encoding mechanism to map classical features to quantum states for alternative feature representations and classification purposes. Experimental results show that the Q-CNN outperformed the standard CNN, reaching 97% training and validation accuracy compared to 94%, and lowering training and validation losses from 17% and 18% to 9% and 11%, respectively. Furthermore, precision, recall, and F1-score were increased from 90%, 88%, and 89% to 92%, 94%, and 93%, respectively. These findings demonstrate the potential effectiveness of quantum feature encoding for image classification tasks and provide a structured framework for enriched feature representation in convolution-based image processing models.