# Medical vision-language models

Area: [Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models](https://mlsanity.com/mllm/index.md). HTML: https://mlsanity.com/mllm/medical-vision-language-models/

## Key facts

- Medical vision-language models: 947 papers on arXiv since 2021 (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- 272 of its 947 mapped papers (29%) cite “LLaVA-Med: Training a Large Language-and-Vision Assistant for Biomedicine in One Day” (2023, arXiv 2306.00890).
- 74 of its 947 mapped papers (8%) cite “OmniMedVQA: A New Large-Scale Comprehensive Evaluation Benchmark for Medical LVLM” (2024, arXiv 2402.09181).
- 38 new papers 17 Sep–14 Oct.

## Most cited here

- [LLaVA-Med: Training a Large Language-and-Vision Assistant for Biomedicine in One Day](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.00890/) (2023), cited by 272 papers here
- [OmniMedVQA: A New Large-Scale Comprehensive Evaluation Benchmark for Medical LVLM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.09181/) (2024), cited by 74 papers here
- [HuatuoGPT-Vision, Towards Injecting Medical Visual Knowledge into Multimodal LLMs at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.19280/) (2024), cited by 68 papers here
- [Lingshu: A Generalist Foundation Model for Unified Multimodal Medical Understanding and Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.07044/) (2025), cited by 67 papers here
- [MedVLM-R1: Incentivizing Medical Reasoning Capability of Vision-Language Models (VLMs) via Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.19634/) (2025), cited by 59 papers here
- [Med-R1: Reinforcement Learning for Generalizable Medical Reasoning in Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.13939/) (2025), cited by 45 papers here
- [M3D: Advancing 3D Medical Image Analysis with Multi-Modal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00578/) (2024), cited by 44 papers here
- [MedTrinity-25M: A Large-scale Multimodal Dataset with Multigranular Annotations for Medicine](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.02900/) (2024), cited by 35 papers here
- [BiomedGPT: A Generalist Vision-Language Foundation Model for Diverse Biomedical Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.17100/) (2023), cited by 34 papers here
- [HealthGPT: A Medical Large Vision-Language Model for Unifying Comprehension and Generation via Heterogeneous Knowledge Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.09838/) (2025), cited by 32 papers here

## New (17 Sep–14 Oct)

- [Multimodal Medical Image Parsing with Task-Specific Low-Rank Adapters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.19901/) (2026-10-14)
- [Seeing Through the Forgery Is Not Enough: Regressive Sycophancy under Fabricated Evidence in Medical Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.17989/) (2026-10-13)
- [Retrieval-Augmented Multimodal Language Model with Heterogeneous Evidence Integration for Clinical Prognosis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.13510/) (2026-10-09)
- [PathLang: A Language-Centered Benchmark for Vision-Language Models in Computational Pathology](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.11329/) (2026-10-08)
- [MedBenchAgent: Towards Systematic Automation of Medical VLM Benchmark Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.11312/) (2026-10-08)
- [DeltaRepresentation: Geometry Supervised Representation Learning of Phenotypes via Counterfactual Reasoning for Medical VLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.10286/) (2026-10-07)
- [Geometry-Supervised Visual Representation Learning for Multi-Phenotype Lesion Interpretation in Medical VLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.10238/) (2026-10-07)
- [HeiCo-FOCUS: A Clinically Grounded Dataset for Long-Context Video Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.10156/) (2026-10-07)
- [Frozen Models, Evolving Expertise: Model-Agnostic Learning from Deployment Experience for Multimodal Medical AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.09146/) (2026-10-06)
- [Knee3DVLM: Dual-Sequence Full-Volume Vision-Language Modeling for Comprehensive Knee MRI Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.08482/) (2026-10-06)
- [MedPrune: Topology-Efficient Multimodal Multi-Agent Communication Evolution for Medical VQA Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.06695/) (2026-10-05)
- [Localization Lens for Improving Medical Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.04502/) (2026-10-03)
- [Reliability Stress Tests and Decision-Time Routing for Chest X-ray Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.02270/) (2026-10-01)
- [Ranking-Aware Prompt Optimization for Multimodal Clinical Diagnosis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.40361/) (2026-09-30)
- [Learning Where to Look: Anatomical Grounding and Guided Attention for Cardiac MRI Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.39899/) (2026-09-30)
- [CRAFT: Causal Responsibility and Failure Tracing in Medical Vision Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.38810/) (2026-09-30)
- [SAM Meets VLM: Parameter-Decoupled Full-Parameter Training for Unified Medical Reasoning and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.37283/) (2026-09-29)
- [How Medical VLMs Underutilize Their Vision Encoders: A Dermatology Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.36557/) (2026-09-29)
- [Multimodal LLMs Outperform Pathology Foundation Models in Cross-Domain Histological Similarity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.32876/) (2026-09-29)
- [EyeVQA: Benchmarking Ophthalmic Vision-Language Models from Recognition to Spatial Grounding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.32352/) (2026-09-29)
- [Medical Image Alignment Assessment as a Test of Generalist Visual Reasoning in Frontier Multimodal Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.06896/) (2026-09-28)
- [SentZero: An Enhanced Sentence-Centric Vision-Language Pretraining for Multi-Task Zero-Shot Chest X-Ray Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.34479/) (2026-09-28)
- [Clinical Trajectory Alignment for Medical Vision-Language Pre-training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.34439/) (2026-09-28)
- [FOCUS: Benchmarking Retinal Model Generalization from Foundation Vision Encoders to Multimodal LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.33158/) (2026-09-27)
- [Contamination, Prior, or Evidence? Decomposing and Training Evidence Use in Whole-Slide Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.32185/) (2026-09-26)
- [Does Vision-Language Pretraining Granularity Matter? A Controlled Evaluation of Vision-Language Objectives Across Chest X-Ray Interpretation Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.31985/) (2026-09-25)
- [Enhancing Visual Reasoning in Chest X-Ray Report Generation Using Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.31911/) (2026-09-25)
- [From Reward Signal to Visual Utility: A Controlled Audit of Medical VLM Post-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.31450/) (2026-09-25)
- [ViSTA: A Simple Bridge Extends Visual Alignment to Clinical Time-Series Understanding in Multimodal LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.31448/) (2026-09-25)
- [UltraG-Bench: A Multi-task Benchmark for assessing Large Vision-Language Models on Pixel-level Evidence Grounding in Ultrasound](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.30928/) (2026-09-25)