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Microscopy Images of Microplastics in Photovoltaic-Covered Irrigation Pond Water
Summary
Scientists photographed tiny plastic particles found in water from an irrigation pond in Spain (one that's covered with solar panels) to build and test an AI tool that can automatically spot and measure microplastics in water samples. This matters because irrigation water can carry microplastics onto crops we eventually eat, and faster, more reliable detection methods could help researchers track this potential contamination more efficiently. Note that this dataset is about developing the measurement tool itself, not about health effects, it doesn't tell us how much microplastic exposure is happening or what harm it might cause.
This dataset contains 71 optical microscopy images of suspected microplastic particles collected from water stored in a photovoltaic-covered irrigation pond in Salamanca, Spain, during sampling campaigns conducted between 2024 and 2026. The images include scale references of 100, 200 or 400 µm and show particles with different shapes, sizes and orientations. They were used for manual particle-length measurement and for developing and validating an AI-assisted image-analysis workflow based on automatic scale recognition, SAM2 segmentation, morphological skeletonization and length estimation. Some images contain portions of the grid printed on the filtration membrane, which may interfere with automatic particle segmentation.