Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

submittedVersion

Publication Date

6-2024

Abstract

With the rapid development of Quantum Machine Learning, quantum neural networks (QNN) have experienced great advancement in the past few years, harnessing the advantages of quantum computing to significantly speed up classical machine learning tasks. Despite their increasing popularity, the quantum neural network is quite counter-intuitive and difficult to understand, due to their unique quantum-specific layers (e.g., data encoding and measurement) in their architecture. It prevents QNN users and researchers from effectively understanding its inner workings and exploring the model training status. To fill the research gap, we propose VIOLET , a novel visual analytics approach to improve the explainability of quantum neural networks. Guided by the design requirements distilled from the interviews with domain experts and the literature survey, we developed three visualization views: the Encoder View unveils the process of converting classical input data into quantum states, the Ansatz View reveals the temporal evolution of quantum states in the training process, and the Feature View displays the features a QNN has learned after the training process. Two novel visual designs, i.e., satellite chart and augmented heatmap, are proposed to visually explain the variational parameters and quantum circuit measurements respectively. We evaluate VIOLET through two case studies and in-depth interviews with 12 domain experts. The results demonstrate the effectiveness and usability of VIOLET in helping QNN users and developers intuitively understand and explore quantum neural networks.

Keywords

Data visualization, explainable artificial intelligence (XAI), quantum machine learning, quantum neural networks

Discipline

Artificial Intelligence and Robotics | Graphics and Human Computer Interfaces

Research Areas

Software and Cyber-Physical Systems

Areas of Excellence

Digital transformation

Publication

IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics

Volume

30

Issue

6

First Page

1

Last Page

11

ISSN

1077-2626

Identifier

10.1109/TVCG.2024.3388557

Publisher

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2024.3388557

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