# MedViLaM: A multimodal large language model with advanced generalizability and explainability for medical data understanding and generation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.19684 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.19684/

## Key facts

- Cited by 17 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Medical vision-language models, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models.
- Builds on 23 of its 45 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Sep 2024.

## Placed in

- Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models / [Medical vision-language models](https://mlsanity.com/mllm/medical-vision-language-models/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 23 of 23)

- [YOLOv3: An Incremental Improvement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.02767/) (2018)
- [CheXpert: A Large Chest Radiograph Dataset with Uncertainty Labels and Expert Comparison](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.07031/) (2019)
- [ChestX-ray8: Hospital-scale Chest X-ray Database and Benchmarks on Weakly-Supervised Classification and Localization of Common Thorax Diseases](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.02315/) (2017)
- [EndoNet: A Deep Architecture for Recognition Tasks on Laparoscopic Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.03012/) (2016)
- [Making the Most of Text Semantics to Improve Biomedical Vision--Language Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.09817/) (2022)
- [PadChest: A large chest x-ray image dataset with multi-label annotated reports](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.07441/) (2019)
- [COVID-Net: A Tailored Deep Convolutional Neural Network Design for Detection of COVID-19 Cases from Chest X-Ray Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.09871/) (2020)
- [VinDr-CXR: An open dataset of chest X-rays with radiologist's annotations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.15029/) (2020)
- [Validation, comparison, and combination of algorithms for automatic detection of pulmonary nodules in computed tomography images: the LUNA16 challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.08012/) (2016)
- [Can AI help in screening Viral and COVID-19 pneumonia?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.13145/) (2020)
- [Skin Lesion Analysis toward Melanoma Detection: A Challenge at the International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI) 2016, hosted by the International Skin Imaging Collaboration (ISIC)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.01397/) (2016)
- [COVID-19 Image Data Collection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.11597/) (2020)
- [VinDr-Mammo: A large-scale benchmark dataset for computer-aided diagnosis in full-field digital mammography](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11205/) (2022)
- [BIMCV COVID-19+: a large annotated dataset of RX and CT images from COVID-19 patients](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.01174/) (2020)
- [Video Polyp Segmentation: A Deep Learning Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.14291/) (2022)
- [ISINet: An Instance-Based Approach for Surgical Instrument Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.05533/) (2020)
- [Coswara -- A Database of Breathing, Cough, and Voice Sounds for COVID-19 Diagnosis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.10548/) (2020)
- [Visual Grounding with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.04281/) (2021)
- [A Structure-Aware Relation Network for Thoracic Diseases Detection and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10326/) (2021)
- [Segmentation and Vascular Vectorization for Coronary Artery by Geometry-based Cascaded Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.04208/) (2023)
- [VinDr-SpineXR: A deep learning framework for spinal lesions detection and classification from radiographs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12930/) (2021)
- [Contrastive Transformer-based Multiple Instance Learning for Weakly Supervised Polyp Frame Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.12121/) (2022)
- [DICOM Imaging Router: An Open Deep Learning Framework for Classification of Body Parts from DICOM X-ray Scans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.06490/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [A Comprehensive Survey on the Trustworthiness of Large Language Models in Healthcare](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.15871/) (2025)
- [Multimodal Large Language Models for Medicine: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.21051/) (2025)
- [A foundation model for generalizable disease diagnosis in chest X-ray images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08861/) (2024)
- [The Model Knows Which Tokens Matter: Automatic Token Selection via Noise Gating](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.07135/) (2026)
- [Efficient Chest X-ray Representation Learning via Semantic-Partitioned Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.07113/) (2026)
- [Beyond Surrogate Gradients: Fully Differentiable Token Pruning for Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.28051/) (2026)
- [Multimodal Model for Computational Pathology:Representation Learning and Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.18660/) (2026)
- [A unified multi-task framework enables interpretable chest radiograph analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.03417/) (2026)
- [XrayClaw: Cooperative-Competitive Multi-Agent Alignment for Trustworthy Chest X-ray Diagnosis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.02695/) (2026)
- [Stepwise Token Selection for Efficient Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.16067/) (2026)
- [Learnable Token Sparsification for Efficient Gigapixel Whole Slide Image Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.08641/) (2026)
- [Point, Detect, Count: Multi-Task Medical Image Understanding with Instruction-Tuned Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.16647/) (2025)
- [Perceive and Calibrate: Analyzing and Enhancing Robustness of Medical Multi-Modal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.21964/) (2025)
- [PathSelect: Sequential Token Selection for Whole Slide Pathology](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.23631/) (2026)
- [DiffPrune: differentiable information throttling for token pruning in vision-language models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.01985/) (2026)
- [From Snapshots to Symphonies: The Evolution of Protein Prediction from Static Structures to Generative Dynamics and Multimodal Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.18505/) (2026)
- [StepPrune: Adaptive Sequential Visual Token Selection across Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.13804/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Medicine is inherently multimodal and multitask, with diverse data modalities spanning text, imaging. However, most models in medical field are unimodal single tasks and lack good generalizability and explainability. In this study, we introduce MedViLaM, a unified vision-language model towards a generalist model for medical data that can flexibly encode and interpret various forms of medical data, including clinical language and imaging, all using the same set of model weights. To facilitate the creation of such multi-task model, we have curated MultiMedBench, a comprehensive pretaining dataset and benchmark consisting of several distinct tasks, i.e., continuous question-answering, multi-label disease classification, disease localization, generation and summarization of radiology reports. MedViLaM demonstrates strong performance across all MultiMedBench tasks, frequently outpacing other generalist models by a significant margin. Additionally, we present instances of zero-shot generalization to new medical concepts and tasks, effective transfer learning across different tasks, and the emergence of zero-shot medical reasoning.