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The term Big Data refers to collections of sets of large and complex data which are impossible to process with standard databases and most commonly available ICT tools.

Since 1995, the vast amount of data collected in neuroimaging has doubled approximately every 26 months. At this rate, by 2015 the number of neuroimaging data acquired, not including header information and data generated during processing and statistical analysis, may exceed an average of 20GB per study published research.

Neuroimaging research, by it's very nature, handles large data volumes, is multimodal and collaborative. However, the infrastructure needed to support the brain research where data processing and handling is at the core of any progress in this field , is still developing.

The next steps for resource development supporting Brain Imaging Big Data to the scale of hexabytes will require the creation of new tools and services for data discovery, integration, analysis and visualization.

For the science of Big Data in brain imaging, now it's time to begin.