Getting Started

Installation

You can install the latest version of Bridge’s from PyPI. It comes in a few flavors:

Core: The core package includes the basic functionality of Bridge.

$ uv add bridge-ds

Vision: The vision package includes the core package and additional (opinionated) functionality for working with image datasets.

$ uv add bridge-ds[vision]

Key Concepts

In this section you will learn the basics of Bridge. Start by reading about the key concepts, and then proceed to the guides below.

Element

An Element is the basic unit of data in a Dataset, from raw data objects such as images, text, audio, to various annotations such as class labels, bounding boxes, and segmentation maps. In essence, anything that constitutes a piece of information within the dataset can be an Element.

Sample

A Sample is a collection of Elements. It is our representation of a typical item-within-a-dataset. For example, an image with object detections constitutes a Sample, comprising a single image Element and multiple bounding box Elements.

Dataset

A Dataset is a collection of Samples. It exposes the Table and Sample APIs.

Table API

A general term for the set of functions and operators exposed by the Dataset which allows users to perform high-level operations with a user experience similar to Pandas - assign, query, sort, map, etc. In short, an API that allows users to treat any dataset as a DataFrame, where every row is an element.

Sample API

A general term for the set of functions and operators exposed by the Dataset which allows users to work on individual examples in the dataset in a meaningful manner. If the Table API is meant for high-level dataset management, then the Sample API is used for low-level operations like loading, caching, and transforming raw data (e.g. pixels, strings).