The Brain Image Library (BIL) is a national public resource enabling researchers to deposit, analyze, mine, share and interact with large brain image datasets. BIL encompasses the deposition of datasets, the integration of datasets into a searchable web-accessible system, the redistribution of datasets, and a computational enclave to allow researchers to process datasets in-place and share restricted and pre-release datasets.

BIL serves a geographically distributed customer base including large confocal imaging centers that are generating petabytes of confocal imaging datasets per year. For these customers, the library serves as an archive facility for whole brain volumetric datasets from mammals. BIL also serves geographically distributed researchers who want to interact with and download library datasets.

The BIL is operated as a partnership between the Biomedical Applications Group at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and the Center for Biological Imaging at the University of Pittsburgh.

The Biomedical Applications Group at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center pursues leading edge research in the biomedical sciences and fosters exchange between PSC expertise in computational science and biomedical researchers nationwide. Scientists in the Biomedical Applications Group develop computational methods and tools and conduct research on biomedical systems at the cell and tissue level with foci on the brain and the central nervous system and volumetric image analysis. The PSC provides university, government and industrial researchers with access to several of the most powerful systems for high-performance computing, communications and data storage available to scientists and engineers nationwide for unclassified research. PSC advances the state of the art in high-performance computing, communications and data analytics and offers a flexible environment for solving the largest and most challenging problems in computational science.

The Center for Biologic Imaging (CBI) at the University of Pittsburgh is one of the largest optical imaging centers in the country. The mission of the Center for Biologic Imaging is to provide integrated elite level access and training on infrastructure used for research, education, technology development and collaboration in Microscopy, Biophotonics and Imaging. The Center is deeply committed to providing open and transparent access to the most cutting edge optical imaging equipment to all biomedical research faculty, though with priority where access is intended to lead to funded collaborations or where funded collaborations pre-exist and joint outputs such as co-authored publications, IP filings and grant applications will result.