Quantum Machine Learning for Colorectal Cancer Data: Anastomotic Leak Classification and Risk Factors

This study evaluates colorectal risk factors and compares classical models against Quantum Neural Networks (QNNs) for anastomotic leak prediction. Analyzing clinical data with 14% leak prevalence, we tested ZZFeatureMap encodings with RealAmplitudes and EfficientSU2 ansatze under simulated noise. $F_{\beta }$-optimized quantum configurations yielded significantly higher sensitivity (83.3%) than classical baselines (66.7%). This demonstrates that quantum feature spaces better prioritize minority class identification, which is critical for low-prevalence clinical risk prediction. Our work explores various optimizers under noisy conditions, highlighting key trade-offs and future directions for hardware deployment.