SlideQC BF

SlideQC BF is an AI-powered quality control application from Indica Labs designed for H&E- and IHC-stained whole slide images. It automatically detects the most common artifacts generated during slide preparation and scanning — including air bubbles, dust and debris, folds, out-of-focus areas, and pen marks — enabling a robust and consistent quality assurance workflow in digital pathology laboratories.

The tool is intended for laboratory personnel who need to quantify slide artifacts efficiently and reliably. SlideQC BF is seamlessly integrated into the HALO AP® digital pathology platform, making it suitable for anatomic pathology workflows in both research and clinical laboratory settings.

Key Capabilities

• AI-powered detection of common whole slide image artifacts: air bubbles, dust/debris, folds, out-of-focus regions, and pen marks
• Support for both H&E- and IHC-stained whole slide images
• Generates a visual mask identifying artifact-affected areas on each slide
• Calculates the area and percentage of the slide affected by each artifact type
• Automatically analyzes each slide to assess tissue adequacy and reduce case turnaround times
• User-defined artifact thresholds that trigger additional review processes for consistency in lab operations

Workflow and Automation Features

• Automates quality control tasks, freeing technicians and staff to focus on other laboratory responsibilities
• Provides pathologists with high-quality digital slides to expedite report generation and improve workflow efficiency
• Within HALO AP®, automatically tags cases with slides meeting or exceeding a laboratory-defined artifact threshold for further review
• Triages cases into separate worklists for automatic quality control workflows, assigning either a "further review" or "ready" status
• Ensures only high-quality slides are submitted for pathologist review, reducing unnecessary delays

Validation and Performance

• Validated on external dataset images scanned by Pannoramic 1000 (HistoQC) and Pannoramic 250 Flash III scanner (Lyon 19) from 3D HISTECH
• Achieved high precision, recall, and F1-score on external test sets of both H&E and IHC images
• Performance evaluated across multiple artifact types

Supported File Formats

• Non-proprietary formats: JPG, TIF, OME.TIFF, DICOM (DCM)
• Leica: SVS, AFI, SCN, LIF
• Hamamatsu: NDPI, NDPIS
• Philips: iSyntax, i2Syntax
• 3DHistech: MRXS
• Nikon: ND2
• Akoya: QPTIFF, component TIFF
• Olympus / Evident: VSI
• Zeiss: CZI
• Ventana: BIF
• KFBIO: KFB, KFBF

SlideQC BF is deployed and fully integrated into HALO AP®, the AI-powered enterprise digital pathology platform from Indica Labs. HALO AP® is CE-IVDR marked for in-vitro diagnostic use in Europe, the UK, and Switzerland, and provides built-in compliance with FDA 21 CFR Part 11, HIPAA, and GDPR. SlideQC BF itself is intended for use as a quality control tool and is not regulated as a medical device in the EU/UK; in the USA it is for Research Use Only and is not FDA cleared for clinical diagnostic use.