Quantum PDF Extraction Pipeline

Project Title

Automated Dataset Creation: Image-to-Text Dataset for Quantum Circuit Diagrams

Project Overview

I am looking to hire a skilled freelancer to help implement an automated, reproducible Python pipeline for building a specialized dataset used in image-to-text models for quantum computing.

The task focuses on extracting quantum circuit schematic images from scientific PDFs (arXiv), along with structured textual metadata. This is a research-oriented NLP + document-processing project with strict technical constraints and quality requirements.

All detailed requirements, rules, and constraints are already defined in the project specification. Additional internal resources and clarifications will be shared after finalizing the freelancer.

Scope of Work (High-Level)

The freelancer will help design and/or implement parts of a pipeline that:

Processes a fixed list of arXiv papers in strict order

Extracts quantum circuit images only (not plots, tables, or setups)

Saves images in PNG format

Builds a JSON dataset with structured metadata per image

Extracts and aligns descriptive text from PDFs

Identifies quantum gates and associated algorithms where possible

Produces clean, reproducible, well-documented Python code

The solution must be fully automated, generalizable, and runnable on a restricted academic environment (no external APIs except arXiv).

Minimum Technical Requirements (Must-Have)
Programming & Tools

Strong Python skills

Hands-on experience with PDF processing

PyMuPDF (fitz) and/or pdf2image

Experience with text extraction from scientific PDFs

Solid understanding of JSON and CSV data pipelines

Clean, modular, well-documented code style (functions, docstrings, comments)

NLP & OCR

Practical experience with OCR pipelines

PaddleOCR and/or Tesseract

Ability to clean and normalize noisy OCR outputs

Basic NLP techniques for keyword detection and sentence extraction

Regex, rule-based parsing, optional SpaCy usage

Reproducibility & Quality

Ability to write deterministic, reproducible code

Attention to dataset consistency and validation

Comfortable working under strict academic evaluation criteria

Required Domain Knowledge

You do not need to be a quantum physicist, but you must have:

Basic understanding of quantum circuits

Common gates (H, X, Y, Z, CNOT/CX, SWAP, Toffoli, etc.)

Familiarity with quantum algorithms terminology

Examples: Shor’s algorithm, Grover’s algorithm, QFT, VQE, teleportation

Ability to recognize quantum circuit diagrams visually and textually

This level of knowledge is essential to avoid false positives and poor dataset quality.

Nice-to-Have Skills

Prior work with scientific document mining

Experience building datasets for ML / NLP

Experience working on research or university-level projects

Familiarity with Linux / lab environments

Experience writing short technical documentation or reports

Constraints (Very Important)

❌ No external APIs or cloud services (except arXiv PDF download)

❌ No manual hand-crafted dataset entries

✅ Fully automated and reproducible solution only

✅ Code must run on a restricted academic machine environment

✅ Focus on quality over shortcuts

Deliverables (Expected)

Python source code (modular, documented)

Extracted images (PNG)

JSON dataset with required metadata

CSV summary of processed papers

Clear explanation of approach and assumptions (inline comments + short notes)

Project Timeline

Short, fixed academic timeline (approximately 1 week)

Looking for someone who can start immediately and work efficiently