Medical Multimodal Foundation Models in Clinical Diagnosis and Treatment: Applications, Challenges, and Future Directions
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Abstract (arXiv)
Recent advancements in deep learning have significantly revolutionized the field of clinical diagnosis and treatment, offering novel approaches to improve diagnostic precision and treatment efficacy across diverse clinical domains, thus driving the pursuit of precision medicine. The growing availability of multi-organ and multimodal datasets has accelerated the development of large-scale Medical Multimodal Foundation Models (MMFMs). These models, known for their strong generalization capabilities and rich representational power, are increasingly being adapted to address a wide range of clinical tasks, from early diagnosis to personalized treatment strategies. This review offers a comprehensive analysis of recent developments in MMFMs, focusing on three key aspects: datasets, model architectures, and clinical applications. We also explore the challenges and opportunities in optimizing multimodal representations and discuss how these advancements are shaping the future of healthcare by enabling improved patient outcomes and more efficient clinical workflows.
Key facts. Cited by 17 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 104 of its 182 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 3 Dec 2024.
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104 of 182 references.
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Citing papers per year: 2025: 10; 2026: 7.
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- 2025Surgical Scene Understanding in the Era of Foundation AI Models: A Comprehensive Reviewcited by 8
- 2025Med-GLIP: Advancing Medical Language-Image Pre-training with Large-scale Grounded Datasetcited by 7
- 2025Applications of Large Models in Medicinecited by 6
- 2025HeartcareGPT: A Unified Multimodal ECG Suite for Dual Signal-Image Modeling and Understandingcited by 3
- 2025MedIQA: A Scalable Foundation Model for Prompt-Driven Medical Image Quality Assessmentcited by 2
- 2025Multimodal Foundation Models for Early Disease Detectioncited by 1
- 2025MedInsightBench: Evaluating Medical Analytics Agents Through Multi-Step Insight Discovery in Multimodal Medical Datacited by 1
- 2026Aligning Clinical Needs and AI Capabilities: A Survey on LLMs for Medical Reasoningcited by 1
- 2025CLAPS: A CLIP-Unified Auto-Prompt Segmentation for Multi-Modal Retinal Imagingcited by 0
- 2025Evaluating Fundus-Specific Foundation Models for Diabetic Macular Edema Detectioncited by 0
- 2025Can Large Language Models Function as Qualified Pediatricians? A Systematic Evaluation in Real-World Clinical Contextscited by 0
- 2026A Vision for Multisensory Intelligence: Sensing, Science, and Synergycited by 0
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- 2026Modeling Local, Global, and Cross-Modal Context in Multimodal 3D MRIcited by 0
- 2026In-Context Learning for Wound Classification with Small Multimodal Language Modelscited by 0
- 2026Protecting patient privacy in clinical foundation models: Technical and legal perspectivescited by 0
- 2026Protecting patient privacy in clinical foundation models: Technical and legal perspectives7 Aug 2026
- 2026In-Context Learning for Wound Classification with Small Multimodal Language Models21 Jul 2026
- 2026Aligning Clinical Needs and AI Capabilities: A Survey on LLMs for Medical Reasoning8 Jul 2026
- 2026Modeling Local, Global, and Cross-Modal Context in Multimodal 3D MRI25 Jun 2026
- 2026Foundation Models for Medical Imaging: Status, Challenges, and Directions17 Feb 2026
- 2026Imaging-anchored Multiomics in Cardiovascular Disease: Integrating Cardiac Imaging, Bulk, Single-cell, and Spatial Transcriptomics10 Jan 2026
- 2026A Vision for Multisensory Intelligence: Sensing, Science, and Synergy8 Jan 2026
- 2025MedInsightBench: Evaluating Medical Analytics Agents Through Multi-Step Insight Discovery in Multimodal Medical Data15 Dec 2025
- 2025Can Large Language Models Function as Qualified Pediatricians? A Systematic Evaluation in Real-World Clinical Contexts17 Nov 2025
- 2025Evaluating Fundus-Specific Foundation Models for Diabetic Macular Edema Detection8 Oct 2025
- 2025Multimodal Foundation Models for Early Disease Detection2 Oct 2025
- 2025CLAPS: A CLIP-Unified Auto-Prompt Segmentation for Multi-Modal Retinal Imaging10 Sep 2025
5 more
- 2025Med-GLIP: Advancing Medical Language-Image Pre-training with Large-scale Grounded Dataset14 Aug 2025
- 2025MedIQA: A Scalable Foundation Model for Prompt-Driven Medical Image Quality Assessment25 Jul 2025
- 2025HeartcareGPT: A Unified Multimodal ECG Suite for Dual Signal-Image Modeling and Understanding6 Jun 2025
- 2025Applications of Large Models in Medicine24 Feb 2025
- 2025Surgical Scene Understanding in the Era of Foundation AI Models: A Comprehensive Review16 Feb 2025
- 2025Surgical Scene Understanding in the Era of Foundation AI Models: A Comprehensive Reviewcited by 8
- 2025Med-GLIP: Advancing Medical Language-Image Pre-training with Large-scale Grounded Datasetcited by 7
- 2025Applications of Large Models in Medicinecited by 6
- 2025HeartcareGPT: A Unified Multimodal ECG Suite for Dual Signal-Image Modeling and Understandingcited by 3
- 2025MedIQA: A Scalable Foundation Model for Prompt-Driven Medical Image Quality Assessmentcited by 2
- 2025Multimodal Foundation Models for Early Disease Detectioncited by 1
- 2025MedInsightBench: Evaluating Medical Analytics Agents Through Multi-Step Insight Discovery in Multimodal Medical Datacited by 1
- 2025CLAPS: A CLIP-Unified Auto-Prompt Segmentation for Multi-Modal Retinal Imagingcited by 0
- 2025Evaluating Fundus-Specific Foundation Models for Diabetic Macular Edema Detectioncited by 0
- 2025Can Large Language Models Function as Qualified Pediatricians? A Systematic Evaluation in Real-World Clinical Contextscited by 0
- 2026A Vision for Multisensory Intelligence: Sensing, Science, and Synergycited by 0
- 2026Imaging-anchored Multiomics in Cardiovascular Disease: Integrating Cardiac Imaging, Bulk, Single-cell, and Spatial Transcriptomicscited by 0
12 most cited of 15 All 15 (JSON)
- 2026Protecting patient privacy in clinical foundation models: Technical and legal perspectives7 Aug 2026
- 2026Modeling Local, Global, and Cross-Modal Context in Multimodal 3D MRI25 Jun 2026
- 2026Foundation Models for Medical Imaging: Status, Challenges, and Directions17 Feb 2026
- 2026Imaging-anchored Multiomics in Cardiovascular Disease: Integrating Cardiac Imaging, Bulk, Single-cell, and Spatial Transcriptomics10 Jan 2026
- 2026A Vision for Multisensory Intelligence: Sensing, Science, and Synergy8 Jan 2026
- 2025MedInsightBench: Evaluating Medical Analytics Agents Through Multi-Step Insight Discovery in Multimodal Medical Data15 Dec 2025
- 2025Can Large Language Models Function as Qualified Pediatricians? A Systematic Evaluation in Real-World Clinical Contexts17 Nov 2025
- 2025Evaluating Fundus-Specific Foundation Models for Diabetic Macular Edema Detection8 Oct 2025
- 2025Multimodal Foundation Models for Early Disease Detection2 Oct 2025
- 2025CLAPS: A CLIP-Unified Auto-Prompt Segmentation for Multi-Modal Retinal Imaging10 Sep 2025
- 2025Med-GLIP: Advancing Medical Language-Image Pre-training with Large-scale Grounded Dataset14 Aug 2025
- 2025MedIQA: A Scalable Foundation Model for Prompt-Driven Medical Image Quality Assessment25 Jul 2025
12 newest of 15 All 15 (JSON)