Meta-Album Plankton: 800 Images of 20 Marine Plankton Classes

800 preprocessed plankton images from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, created in 2022. The dataset contains 20 classes, with images standardized to 128x128 pixels through a described preprocessing pipeline involving background creation and Gaussian blurring. It is part of the Meta-Album benchmark collection for few-shot learning.

Use Cases

• Benchmarking few-shot learning algorithms based on the standardized 20-class image collection.
• Training image classifiers for plankton species identification based on the described controlled-environment imagery.
• Developing data augmentation techniques for small-scale biological image datasets based on the 128x128 pixel format.
• Studying model performance on images with varied object orientations as described in the data collection process.

Strengths

• Contains 800 images across 20 distinct classes, providing a defined scope for model evaluation.
• Images are preprocessed to a uniform 128x128 pixel size with a documented method involving background creation and blurring.
• Has clear provenance from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and is released under an MIT License.

Limitations

• The dataset is relatively small with 800 images, which may limit training for data-hungry deep learning models.
• Preprocessing steps like background addition and blurring may alter original image characteristics, affecting transfer to real-world data.
• Metadata completeness is limited; specific image acquisition dates and detailed per-class distributions are not provided.

Provenance

Source

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), preprocessed and released by Meta-Album.

Collection Method

Collected using an Imaging FlowCytobot (IFCB), with images preprocessed by adding a blurred squared background and resizing.

Time Range

Original data from 2015; Meta-Album version created in 2022.

Freshness

Created on 01 March 2022; last update date is unknown.

Geography

Data collection location is not specified, but source is a major oceanographic institution.