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The NIH BRAIN Initiative is currently in its fifth year. We reflect on its impact on methods development at a time when the program’s future direction is under discussion.
Public data archives are the backbone of modern biological research. Biomolecular archives are well established, but bioimaging resources lag behind them. The technology required for imaging archives is now available, thus enabling the creation of the first public bioimage datasets. We present the rationale for the construction of bioimage archives and their associated databases to underpin the next revolution in bioinformatics discovery.