EMPIAR — Electron Microscopy Public Image Archive

Overview

EMPIAR is the public repository for raw electron microscopy images and associated data at EMBL-EBI, launched in 2013. It stores raw images underpinning 3D cryo-EM maps and tomograms (archived separately in EMDB), and also accepts datasets from volume EM techniques and X-ray tomography. All deposited data is released under a CC0 licence. Submissions undergo human moderation, and embargo is supported for pre-publication data. As of April 2026, EMPIAR contains 2,860 entries totalling 8.31 PiB of storage. EMPIAR is a major component of the EMBL-EBI BioImage Archive initiative, which is expanding it into a multi-petabyte-scale resource integrating electron and light microscopy data.

Connections

• Operated by: EMBL (EMBL-EBI)
• Raw image archive for: EMDB (Electron Microscopy Data Bank)
• Integrates with: BioImage Archive

Resources

• https://www.ebi.ac.uk/empiar
• https://www.ebi.ac.uk/empiar/about (About page)
• https://www.ebi.ac.uk/empiar/deposition (submission portal)
• https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkac1062 (Iudin et al. 2023, NAR, canonical reference)