Qutrit representation of quantum images: new quantum ternary circuit design

Quantum computation is growing in significance and proving to be a powerful tool in meeting the high real-time computational demands of classical digital image processing. However, extensive research has been done on quantum image processing, mainly rooted in binary quantum systems. In this paper, we propose a new quantum ternary image circuit based on the analysis of the existing qutrit representation of quantum images. The proposed design utilizes ternary shift gates and ternary Muthukrishnan–Stroud gates, with the belief that this circuit can be used for ternary quantum image processing. This study makes a significant improvement compared to the existing counterpart in terms of quantum cost, the number of constant inputs, and garbage outputs, which are all essential parameters in quantum circuit design.