WBCBench 2026: A Challenge for Robust White Blood Cell Classification Under Class Imbalance
Not on the map. Why?
Abstract (arXiv)
We present WBCBench 2026, an ISBI challenge and benchmark for automated WBC classification designed to stress-test algorithms under three key difficulties: (i) severe class imbalance across 13 morphologically fine-grained WBC classes, (ii) strict patient-level separation between training, validation and test sets, and (iii) synthetic scanner- and setting-induced domain shift via controlled noise, blur and illumination perturbations. All images are single-site microscopic blood smear acquisitions with standardised staining and expert hematopathologist annotations. This paper reviews the challenge and summarises the proposed solutions and final outcomes. The benchmark is organised into two phases. Phase 1 provides a pristine training set. Phase 2 introduces degraded images with split-specific severity distributions for train, validation and test, emulating a realistic shift between development and deployment conditions. We specify a standardised submission schema, open-source evaluator, and macro-averaged F1 score as the primary ranking metric.
Key facts. Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 7 of its 16 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 12 Apr 2026.
Builds on
7 of 16 references.
References · 7
- 2015Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognitioncited by 52,096
- 2021Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windowscited by 12,139
- 2025Mamba-Based Ensemble learning for White Blood Cell Classificationcited by 1
- 2026Robust White Blood Cell Classification with Stain-Normalized Decoupled Learning and Ensemblingcited by 1
- 2026Synergizing Deep Learning and Biological Heuristics for Extreme Long-Tail White Blood Cell Classificationcited by 1
- 2026Multi-Stage Fine-Tuning of Pathology Foundation Models with Head-Diverse Ensembling for White Blood Cell Classificationcited by 1
- 2026Ensemble of Small Classifiers For Imbalanced White Blood Cell Classificationcited by 1
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 2.
2 papers.