Learn how Indica Labs’ customers employ HALO products for life science, clinical, and diagnostic use cases.
Indica Labs is pleased to announce our London HALO® User Group Meeting at Hilton London Metropole on Tuesday December 9 from 12:00 – 16:00. A lunch will be provided to all pre-registered attendees and a drinks reception will follow the event from 16:00 – 17:00.
Our program this year features three excellent guest speakers representing leading universities, digital pathology consortiums, and medical centers who will discuss how they use products and services from Indica Labs to meet their digital pathology goals. Our partners at Molecular Instruments will also join us to share the latest developments in their imaging products and how they integrate with HALO image analysis. In addition to our guest speakers, Indica Labs will present our latest advancements in image analysis, image management, and services and our collaborative work with our partner Leica Biosystems.
We welcome anyone who is interested in learning more about Indica Labs’ quantitative digital pathology solutions to register for the meeting. You do not need to be a current Indica Labs customer to attend. Apply for a place here.
Agenda
Registration/lunch pick up (11:00 – 12:00)
Welcome Address (12:00 – 12:10)
Katie McKinley, VP, Clinical Applications, Indica Labs
Embedding HALO and HALO AI into HALO AP® Workflows (12:10 – 12:30)
Fatlum Hasaj, Applications Specialist, Clinical, Indica Labs
This session will explore how embedding HALO and HALO AI into HALO AP® enables teams to share AI algorithms with pathologists in a controlled, review-ready environment. Whether automated or manually triggered, these tools are designed to be “ready-to-run,” offering unmatched flexibility for diverse workflow requirements.
Overview of Indica’s HALO Clinical AI and Future Roadmap (12:30 – 12:50)
Dr. Peter Caie , Sr. Principal Scientist, AI Diagnostics, Indica Labs
This presentation will give an overview of our current HALO Clinical AI portfolio. We will cover the products and our development and validation strategies. The talk will also give an overview of our future roadmap and collaborative work with our partner Leica Biosystems.
During the talk, you will:
• Understand the current HALO Clinical AI portfolio
• See how we develop and validate our products
• Learn what is coming next in the Clinical AI field for Indica Labs
A Seamless Digital Transformation with HALO AP® and LIMS Integration (12:50 – 13:20)
Dr. Reuben Borg, Consultant Pathologist, Mater Dei Hospital
This presentation outlines the deployment of our digital pathology system, focusing on the system selection process, the parallel implementation of a new laboratory information management system (LIMS), and the seamless integration of both platforms. The session will review the challenges and successes of the tendering phase, highlighting how this selection process ensured a robust selection of vendors and technologies.
Key topics include the technical and operational integration between HALO AP ® and the LIMS, with emphasis on quality control (QC) mechanisms for immunohistochemistry and histology labs. We will discuss how these integrations have streamlined workflows, and improved turnaround times, while maintaining QC standards.
The presentation will also explore our current plans to transition to digital requests, eliminating the need for physical slides and paper forms. This shift enables a fully digital workflow, enhancing efficiency, traceability, and collaboration across departments. By sharing our experiences and lessons learned, we aim to provide actionable insights for institutions considering similar digital transformations in pathology.
Coffee Break (13:20 – 13:40)
NPIC’s National Digital Pathology Research Platform for NHS Secure Data Environments (13:40 – 14:10)
Dr. Alexander Wright, Head of Research Infrastructure, National Pathology Imaging Co-operative, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
The National Pathology Imaging Co-operative (NPIC) based at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is working to digitise pathology imaging across England using a centralised PACS environment. As part of this work, an additional dedicated research environment has been created to receive deidentified copies of routine clinical pathology image data for research – supporting projects and collaborations with academics, healthcare professionals and industry partners across the globe. By utilising HALO Link for image management and AI deployment, we are now scaling up our research platform to support NHS Secure Data Environments (SDEs), to supply them with high quality digital pathology data. Supported by the NHS England Data for Research and Development programme, the platform is being built to provide safe access to large imaging datasets – supporting clinical trials, research cohort discovery, and the development of AI tools.
This talk will give a background to the NPIC programme, an overview of the infrastructure used to support the demands of both of clinical and research activity, and outline how we are utilising HALO Link to manage large scale digital pathology imaging data from various sources to support a diverse range of research projects.
Unlock Cell Population Discovery Using HALO High Dimensional Analysis (14:10 – 14:30)
Dr. Ghislaine Lioux, Sr. Field Applications Scientist, Indica Labs
With multiplexed imaging now routine in digital pathology, extracting meaningful insights from complex datasets is more crucial than ever. Without advanced tools capable of handling numerous biomarkers, key phenotypic patterns and novel cell populations could easily go unnoticed.
The HALO High Dimensional Analysis module addresses this need by seamlessly integrating dimensionality reduction and unsupervised clustering into an intuitive software ecosystem.
During the talk, you will:
• Understand the challenges of analyzing multiplexed imaging data and how high-dimensional techniques address them
• Learn how clustering and dimensionality reduction workflows operate within HALO
• See how the module’s dynamic link back to original images enables you to validate discoveries in their precise spatial context
Leveraging HALO and HALO AI for Spatial mRNA Expression Analysis in Bone Tissue (14:30 – 15:00)
Dr. Bilal Mohamad El-Masri, Postdoctoral Researcher, Dept. of Pathology, Odense University Hospital/Dept. of Clinical Research, University of Southern Denmark, Odense Denmark
Understanding how bone cells coordinate the activation of bone-degrading osteoclasts is key to advancing treatments for skeletal disorders. In this presentation, Bilal El-Masri demonstrates how HALO and HALO AI were used to analyze the spatial mRNA expression of key cytokines and uncover the cellular mechanisms driving osteoclast activation.
By combining single- and multiplex in situ hybridization with AI-powered image analysis, spatial expression patterns of cytokine mRNAs were quantified and mapped across bone compartments. Contrary to long-standing assumptions that matrix-embedded osteocytes act as primary activators, the spatial data revealed that bone surface cells predominantly express activating cytokines, while inhibitory cytokine signals originate mainly from embedded osteocytes.
Through precise cell classification, quantification, and spatial mapping, HALO provided the analytical power needed to visualize complex cytokine signaling within bone tissue. This work highlights how HALO and HALO AI can transform tissue-based research by providing deeper biological insight and enabling new discoveries in spatial biology.
Coffee break (15:00 – 15:20)
Quantitative In Situ Analysis with HCR™ RNA and Protein Imaging: Expanding Discovery with HALO (15:20 – 15:40)
Dr. Aneesh Acharya, Chief Commercial Officer, Molecular Instruments
HCR™ products enable high-performance, quantitative visualization of RNA and protein targets directly within FFPE tissue. This presentation will highlight recent advances in the HCR™ platform—including the HCR™ HiFi Encoder for next-generation multiplex protein imaging and short-target detection chemistry for RNA analysis—that expand the scope of in situ workflows across research and translational applications. Together, these chemistries deliver multiplexed, background-suppressed detection with high signal fidelity and compatibility across diverse tissue types and fixation conditions.
We will demonstrate end-to-end workflows integrating HCR™ Imaging with Indica Labs’ HALO software for automated quantification and spatial analysis of RNA and protein expression. These methods support reproducible, data-rich insights at cellular resolution and enable comparative studies across targets and tissue contexts.
This session emphasizes practical applications and analytical integration, focusing on strategies for generating high-quality, quantitative imaging data from FFPE samples using combined HCR™ and HALO workflows to support biomarker discovery and validation in tissue-based research.
Pharma Services: AI-powered, Quantitative Image Analysis Services from Discovery to Clinical Trials (15:40 – 15:55)
Doug Bowman, VP, Pharma Services, Indica Labs
Our Pharma Services team is an experienced multidisciplinary team that develops AI-powered image analysis workflows to support your preclinical and clinical studies. Building image analysis and AI solutions to support these studies requires multi-subject matter expertise and considerable resources. Developing a strategy that involves a combination of in-house resources and outsourcing allows customers to focus on the key scientific questions to drive their biomarker studies forward.
This presentation will provide a brief introduction of the group, introduce new capabilities, and highlight two AI workflows: analysis of ADC target expression and bystander effect, and workflows for scaling AI training using ground-truth annotations from same section mIF or IHC panels.
Closing Remarks (15:55 – 16:00)
Katie McKinley, VP, Clinical Applications, Indica Labs
Drinks Reception (16:00 – 17:00)
