Raabin-WBC: a large free access dataset of white blood cells from normal peripheral blood

Accurate and early detection of peripheral white blood cell anomalies plays a crucial role in the evaluation of an individual’s well-being. The emergence of new technologies such as artificial intelligence can be very effective in achieving this. In this regard, most of the state-of-the-art methods use deep neural networks. Data can significantly influence the performance and generalization power of machine learning approaches, especially deep neural networks. To that end, we collected a large free available dataset of white blood cells from normal peripheral blood samples called Raabin-WBC. Our dataset contains about 40000 white blood cells and artifacts (color spots). To reassure correct data, a significant number of cells were labeled by two experts, and the ground truth of nucleus and cytoplasm were extracted by experts for some cells (about 1145), as well. To provide the necessary diversity, various smears have been imaged. Hence, two different cameras and two different microscopes were used. The Raabin-WBC dataset can be used for different machine learning tasks such as classification, detection, segmentation, and localization. We also did some primary deep learning experiments on Raabin-WBC, and we showed how the generalization power of machine learning methods, especially deep neural networks, was affected by the mentioned diversity.