AI-Powered Veterinary Imaging Diagnosis Support Driven by NPU Infrastructure

As the number of pet owners has grown, demand for X-ray interpretation at animal hospitals has rapidly increased, but the number of board-certified veterinary radiologists in Korea remains at only a few hundred. SK Telecom developed X Caliber using medical imaging data from national veterinary colleges to detect musculoskeletal, thoracic, and abdominal abnormalities in dog and cat X-rays, and even automatically measures heart size on thoracic X-rays.

In clinical trials, it showed up to 97% agreement with specialist interpretations, but providing stable 24-hour service to hospitals nationwide required more efficient inference infrastructure. To reduce the high power consumption and operating costs of GPU-based servers, SK Telecom redesigned its infrastructure around Rebellions' ATOM™ NPU as the core.

The ATOM™ NPU delivers image inference performance comparable to GPU servers while significantly lowering power consumption, making it advantageous for long-term operation. After verifying stability and performance through a PoC, SK Telecom fully transitioned X Caliber's inference infrastructure from GPU to an NPU-only environment in 2025. The service is now used as a subscription-based cloud web service at approximately 1,000 animal hospitals nationwide, becoming a case that demonstrates the practical applicability of Korean AI semiconductors in medical image analysis.