PixelDeck: A local-first media library manager for biomedical imaging

Biomedical imaging workflows generate large collections of histology, fluorescence microscopy, and high-throughput imaging assets that are difficult to organize, search, and reuse using conventional file systems. We present PixelDeck, an open-source, local-first browser application for management of large image and video libraries on commodity workstations. PixelDeck integrates recursive import, SHA-256-based duplicate detection, metadata extraction, thumbnail generation, and full-text search within a responsive interface. The system uses a transparent SQLite-backed architecture with managed filesystem storage and asynchronous processing. Benchmarks on fresh isolated libraries containing up to 1000 assets showed import throughput exceeding 500 files/min and representative median query latencies in the millisecond range.