# Staining-Independent Malaria Parasite Detection and Life Stage Classification in Blood Smear Images
## 2 Data Descriptions  
There are two datasets utilized in this research. The first dataset, namely the Malaria Bounding Boxes (MBB) dataset [35] (_P. vivax_ only), used in this research is available at [[https://www.kaggle.com/kmader/malaria-bounding-boxes](https://www.kaggle.com/kmader/malaria-bounding-boxes)]([https://www.kaggle.com/kmader/malaria-bounding-boxes](https://www.kaggle.com/kmader/malaria-bounding-boxes)) (accessed on 21 June 2022). There are six classes of cell images, i.e., red blood cell, ring, trophozoite, schizont, gametocyte, and leukocyte. The \"Difficult\" label in the original dataset is not really the ground truth, but rather the expert's opinion that expresses the difficultly of labeling those images. Hence, there is no ground truth for them, and so they are discarded here. Meanwhile, the leukocytes (white blood cells) are discarded here as well. This dataset has a total of 1328 Giemsa-stained blood smear images, including 1208 training images and 120 test images. There are four distinct life stages of _P. vivax_, i.e., ring, trophozoite, schizont, and gametocyte. This dataset is called \"MBB (_P. vivax_)\". The second dataset is the Malaria Parasite Image Database for Image Processing and Analysis (MP-IDB) dataset [36], available at [[https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/97](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/97)]([https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/97](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/97)) 8-3-030-13835-6_7 (accessed on 10 March 2023). There are four different species of malaria parasites in this dataset, i.e., _P. vivax_ (40 images), _P. ovale_ (29 images), _P. malaria_ (37 images), and _P. falciparum_ (104 images). For each species, there are four distinct stages of life, i.e., ring, trophozoite, schizont, and gametocyte. The four sub-datasets are named as \"MP-IDB (_P. vivax_)\", \"MP-IDB (_P. ovale_)\", \"MP-IDB (_P. malariae_)\", and \"MP-IDB (_P. falciparum_)\". To show the variation in these two datasets, the multi-cell images of the MBB dataset and the MP-IDB dataset are illustrated in Figures 1 and 2, respectively. Furthermore, to show how difficult it is to distinguish different malaria parasite life stages in each species,sample images from both datasets are shown accordingly in Figure 3. The figure shows images from different malaria parasites' stages of life, i.e., ring, trophozoite, schizont, and gametocyte, in different species of plasmodium parasites, i.e., _P. vivax_, _P. ovale_, _P. malariae_, and _P. falciparum_, from the MBB and MP-IDB datasets. Some sample red blood cells are also illustrated in the figure. More details of the characteristics of each life stage of each species are elaborated as follows [6; 37]. For _P. ovalae_, the infected red blood cell is slightly enlarged and has an oval shape with tufted ends. The appearance of _P. ovalae_ parasites in different stages is as follows: ring: sturdy cytoplasm and large chromatin; trophozoite: compacted with large chromatin with dark-brown pigment inside; schizont: matured schizont cell has 6-14 erozoites with large nuclei that cluster around mass of dark-brown pigment; gametocyte: round to oval shape, may almost fill RBC, compacted chromatin, with brown malarial pigment inside. For _P. malariae_, the infected red blood cell is not enlarged. The appearance of _P. ovalae_ parasites in different stages is as follows: ring: sturdy cytoplasm, large chromatin; trophozoite: occasional band form with large chromatin, dark-brown pigment inside; schizont: occasional rosettes, mature schizont have 6-12 erozoites with large nuclei that cluster around a mass of coarse, dark-brown pigment inside; gametocyte: round to oval shape, may almost fill RBC, compacted chromatin, with scattered brown pigment inside. For _P. falciparum_, the infected blood cell is not enlarged. The appearance of _P.