Quantum Vision Clustering

Unsupervised visual clustering has recently received considerable attention. It aims to explain distributions of unlabeled visual images by clustering them via a parameterized appearance model. From a different perspective, the clustering algorithms can be treated as assignment problems, often NP-hard. They can be solved precisely for small instances on current hardware. Adiabatic quantum computing (AQC) offers a solution, as it can soon provide a considerable speedup on a range of NP-hard optimization problems. However, current clustering formulations are unsuitable for quantum computing due to their scaling properties. Consequently, in this work, we propose the first clustering formulation designed to be solved with AQC. We employ an Ising model representing the quantum mechanical system implemented on the AQC. Our approach is competitive compared to state-of-the-art optimization-based approaches, even using of-the-shelf integer programming solvers. Finally, we demonstrate that our clustering problem is already solvable on the current generation of real quantum computers for small examples and analyze the properties of the measured solutions.