Seized Ecstasy Pills: Infrared Spectra and Image Datasets

Abstract

According to the World Drug Report 2020, cocaine and ecstasy are the most consumed stimulant drugs, with 19 and 27 million estimated users in 2018. In this context, large efforts are being made to design fast and cost-effective analytical methods to track and monitor the distribution networks of these synthetic drugs. Here, we share two datasets of ecstasy pills seized in the northeast of Switzerland between 2010 and 2011. The first contains 621 forensic-grade images of pills, while the second one consists of 486 mid-infrared (mIR) spectra. While both sets are not covering the same seizure, both provide high-quality data with orthogonal information to evaluate clustering and dimension reduction methods.