README.md

---
license: other
license_name: fair-use-no-warranty
license_link: LICENSE
task_categories:
- object-detection
language:
- bo
tags:
- yolo
- tibetan
- document-layout-analysis
- bounding-box
- tibla
size_categories:
- 1K<n<10K
pretty_name: TiBLAD — Tibetan Book Layout Analysis Dataset
extra_gated_prompt: >-
  The page images in this dataset are scans of Tibetan texts from the BDRC
  digital library and are provided on a FAIR-USE basis for research. No
  copyright license is granted. By requesting access you acknowledge that you
  are solely responsible for performing your own copyright / rights analysis
  before any use, and that the Buddhist Digital Resource Center (BDRC) accepts
  no liability for any misuse of this material.
extra_gated_fields:
  Full name: text
  Affiliation: text
  Intended use: text
  I have read the copyright notice and will perform my own copyright analysis before use: checkbox
  I understand BDRC is not liable for any misuse of this material: checkbox
---

# TiBLAD — Tibetan Book Layout Analysis Dataset

YOLO-format object-detection dataset for **TiBLA (Tibetan Book Layout Analysis)**.
It contains bounding-box annotations for four layout classes (header, text-area,
footer, footnote) on scanned modern Tibetan book pages, split into training,
validation, and test sets.

## Models, code & paper

- **Primary model:** [BDRC/TiBLA-RTDETR](https://huggingface.co/BDRC/TiBLA-RTDETR) (RT-DETR-l, AGPL-3.0)
- **Permissive alternatives:** [BDRC/TiBLA-PP-DocLayout-L](https://huggingface.co/BDRC/TiBLA-PP-DocLayout-L) (Apache-2.0), [BDRC/TiBLA-RFDETR](https://huggingface.co/BDRC/TiBLA-RFDETR) (Apache-2.0)
- **Code:** [github.com/buda-base/tibla](https://github.com/buda-base/tibla)
- **Paper:** [buda-base/papers](https://github.com/buda-base/papers) (`papers/2026-tibetan-book-layout`) — *arXiv link forthcoming*

## Overview

| Property | Value |
| --- | --- |
| **Total annotations** | 25460 |
| **Total images** | 8325 |
| **Number of classes** | 4 |
| **Image format** | JPEG (.jpg) |
| **Label format** | YOLO (.txt) |
| **Splits** | train / val / test |
| **Split unit** | series; also volume-clean |
| **Unique volumes** | 4,533 |
| **Unique series** | 3,807 |
| **Archive scans** | 6,832 |
| **BDRC archive, PDF-derived (not augmented)** | 296 |
| **PDF-extracted, then augmented** | 1,197 (train only) |

## Image Source

All images are sourced from the [Buddhist Digital Resource Center (BDRC)](https://bdrc.io) digital library. At a high level there are **two sources**: **archive
scans** (~85.6%, including a small set of archive files produced from born-digital
PDFs) and **PDF-extracted, then augmented** pages (14.4%, **train only**). In
detail they fall into three groups:

| Source | Images | Volumes (`i_id`) | Series (`w_id`) | Share | Splits |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| **Archive scans** | 6,832 | 4,053 | 3,507 | 82.1% | train 5,317 / val 717 / test 798 |
| **BDRC archive, PDF-derived (not augmented)** | 296 | 129 | 105 | 3.6% | train 229 / val 32 / test 35 |
| **PDF-extracted, then augmented** | 1,197 | 351 | 223 | 14.4% | train only |
| **Total** | 8,325 | 4,533 | 3,807 | 100% | |

Volume ids are disjoint across the three groups. Series (`w_id`) can appear in more than one group, so the series column does not sum to the total.

- **Archive scans** — page photographs from the BDRC image archive (filename prefixes `b3__`, `b4__`, `v10__`). Their volume ids (`I…`) are **not** on BDRC’s inventory of volumes whose archive images were produced from born-digital PDFs.
- **BDRC archive, PDF-derived (not augmented)** — the same archive JPEG pipeline, but the volume (`i_id`) **is** on that PDF-volume inventory (129 volumes, 105 series). These are the original archive files, not geometrically/photometrically augmented copies.
- **PDF-extracted, then augmented** — pages rendered from born-digital PDFs in a later annotation batch and then augmented so they resemble camera or scanner captures. These are confined to **training** (filename prefix `b11__`, `__p####` page marker, `__aug` in the stem).

Volume ids for the first two groups are read from the BDRC filename (`batch__W…__I…__page` for `b3`/`b4`; page file with a 4-digit page suffix for `v10`) and compared to the `i_num` column of BDRC’s PDF-volume list. Series ids (`w_id`) come from the same filenames, or from the volume→work map when the filename only carries an `i_id` (`v10`). For the PDF-augmented batch, the etext reproduction `IE…` is mapped to the corresponding `W…` series, and the volume is the `I…` token when present, otherwise the etext volume `VE…`.

## Classes

| ID | Name | Annotations | % of total |
| -- | --- | --- | --- |
| 0 | header | 8155 | 32.0% |
| 1 | text-area | 10705 | 42.0% |
| 2 | footnote | 367 | 1.4% |
| 3 | footer | 6233 | 24.5% |

Headers and footers occur either as a **top/bottom** running title or page
number, or as a **side-margin** box. Side-margin boxes are uncommon
(141 of 14388 header/footer boxes) and were stratified
across splits.

## Annotation Process

Annotations were created on the Ultralytics HUB platform in a two-stage workflow:

1. **Annotation** — annotators drew bounding boxes for each of the four layout
   classes (header, text-area, footnote, footer) on every page image.
2. **Quality control** — a reviewer inspected every image, verifying label
   correctness, box tightness, and class assignment.
3. **Automated consistency audit** — a final geometric/logical audit flagged
   likely mistakes (near-duplicate or conflicting-class boxes, impossible
   header/footer/footnote orderings, out-of-bounds boxes).

## Split Methodology

The train / val / test split is **series-level and leakage-free**: pages are
grouped at the **series (`w_id`) level** and every page of a series is assigned
together. Because each volume (`i_id`) belongs to one series, the split is also
volume-clean. After assignment, no page (or an augmented copy of it), no volume,
and no series appears in more than one split. 

We tried to select a dataset that is as diverse as possible,
but it is possible that near-identical layouts appear in different splits.

Series were assigned with a greedy residual balancer aimed at ~81% / ~9% /
~10% of images, matching the global mix of the four classes (with extra
weight on the rare footnote class) and of side-margin vs top/bottom
headers and footers.

- **Augmented data** — any series that contains a geometrically/photometrically
  augmented page is assigned to **train**, so validation and test contain no
  `__aug` images. They may still include unaugmented BDRC-archive pages from
  PDF-derived volumes (32 val, 35 test).
- Approximate ratio: ~81% train /
  ~9% val /
  ~10% test by image count.

## Split Statistics

| Split | Images | Volumes | Series |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| train | 6743 | 3917 | 3549 |
| val | 749 | 437 | 92 |
| test | 833 | 179 | 166 |

(train includes 1197 augmented images; val and test include 0 and 0.
Of the non-augmented images, 229 / 32 / 35 in train / val / test come from
BDRC archive volumes that were produced from PDFs.)

## Annotation Distribution per Split

| Class | train | val | test | Total |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| header | 6431 | 848 | 876 | 8155 |
| text-area | 8185 | 1096 | 1424 | 10705 |
| footnote | 295 | 34 | 38 | 367 |
| footer | 4991 | 575 | 667 | 6233 |

Header/footer **placement** (box counts):

| Placement | train | val | test | Total |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| top | 6420 | 848 | 871 | 8139 |
| bottom | 4887 | 563 | 658 | 6108 |
| side | 115 | 12 | 14 | 141 |

> A single image can contain multiple annotations of the same class, so
> annotation counts may exceed image counts.

## Directory Structure

```
TiBLAD/
├── images/
│   ├── train/
│   ├── val/
│   └── test/
├── labels/
│   ├── train/
│   ├── val/
│   └── test/
├── train.txt
├── val.txt
├── test.txt
├── data.yaml
└── README.md
```

## Usage

Point your YOLO training config at `data.yaml`:

```bash
yolo detect train data=data.yaml
```

The `train.txt`, `val.txt`, and `test.txt` files list relative image paths for each split.

## Label Format

Each `.txt` label file uses standard YOLO format — one row per bounding box:

```
<class_id> <x_center> <y_center> <width> <height>
```

All coordinates are normalized to `[0, 1]` relative to image dimensions.

## Copyright & Usage Notice

This dataset does **not** come with an open-content license. The page images
are scans of Tibetan texts from the BDRC digital library and are distributed on
a **fair-use** basis for research and non-commercial layout-analysis work.

- **No copyright license is granted** over the underlying page images.
- **You are solely responsible** for performing your own copyright / rights
  analysis for your jurisdiction and intended use **before** using this
  material.
- **BDRC accepts no liability** for any misuse of this material.

By accessing the gated dataset you accept these terms.

## Acknowledgements

Developed by the [Buddhist Digital Resource Center (BDRC)](https://www.bdrc.io) for
the BDRC Etext Corpus project, funded by the Khyentse Foundation. Thanks to the annotators and reviewers from [Dharmaduta](https://dharmaduta.in) who produced and
consolidated the layout annotations.