# TIME: TabPFN-Integrated Multimodal Engine for Robust Tabular-Image Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.00813 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.00813/

## Key facts

- Cited by 12 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 15 of its 35 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Jun 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 15 of 15)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [XGBoost: A Scalable Tree Boosting System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.02754/) (2016)
- [Multimodal Machine Learning: A Survey and Taxonomy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.09406/) (2017)
- [Modeling Tabular data using Conditional GAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.00503/) (2019)
- [Deep Neural Networks and Tabular Data: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.01889/) (2021)
- [TabTransformer: Tabular Data Modeling Using Contextual Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.06678/) (2020)
- [SAINT: Improved Neural Networks for Tabular Data via Row Attention and Contrastive Pre-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.01342/) (2021)
- [SCARF: Self-Supervised Contrastive Learning using Random Feature Corruption](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.15147/) (2021)
- [TransTab: Learning Transferable Tabular Transformers Across Tables](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.09328/) (2022)
- [Best of Both Worlds: Multimodal Contrastive Learning with Tabular and Imaging Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14080/) (2023)
- [TIP: Tabular-Image Pre-training for Multimodal Classification with Incomplete Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.07582/) (2024)
- [CLIP-Lung: Textual Knowledge-Guided Lung Nodule Malignancy Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08013/) (2023)
- [Multimodal Contrastive Learning and Tabular Attention for Automated Alzheimer's Disease Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.15469/) (2023)
- [NCART: Neural Classification and Regression Tree for Tabular Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.12198/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [TabPFN-2.5: Advancing the State of the Art in Tabular Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.08667/) (2025)
- [Beyond IID: How General Are Tabular Foundation Models, Really?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.30410/) (2026)
- [TabPFN-3: Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.13986/) (2026)
- [MultiModalPFN: Extending Prior-Data Fitted Networks for Multimodal Tabular Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.20223/) (2026)
- [Thinking with Tables: Enhancing Multi-Modal Tabular Understanding via Neuro-Symbolic Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.24004/) (2026)
- [MulTaBench: Benchmarking Multimodal Tabular Learning with Text and Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.10616/) (2026)
- [Adaptation and Fine-tuning with TabPFN for Travelling Salesman Problem](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.05872/) (2025)
- [Brain Vascular Age Prediction Using Cerebral Blood Flow Velocity and Machine Learning Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.16969/) (2026)
- [Modular Multimodal Classification Without Fine-Tuning: A Simple Compositional Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.20674/) (2026)
- [Disentangled Fine-Grained Prototype Learning for Incomplete Image-Tabular Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.05455/) (2026)
- [Parameter-Efficient Adapter Tuning for Tabular-Image Multimodal Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.11682/) (2026)
- [iStructTab: Structured Feature Sequencing for Multimodal Learning of Image and Tabular Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.04348/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Tabular-image multimodal learning, which integrates structured tabular data with imaging data, holds great promise for a variety of tasks, especially in medical applications. Yet, two key challenges remain: (1) the lack of a standardized, pretrained representation for tabular data, as is commonly available in vision and language domains; and (2) the difficulty of handling missing values in the tabular modality, which are common in real-world medical datasets. To address these issues, we propose the TabPFN-Integrated Multimodal Engine (TIME), a novel multimodal framework that builds on the recently introduced tabular foundation model, TabPFN. TIME leverages TabPFN as a frozen tabular encoder to generate robust, strong embeddings that are naturally resilient to missing data, and combines them with image features from pretrained vision backbones. We explore a range of fusion strategies and tabular encoders, and evaluate our approach on both natural and medical datasets. Extensive experiments demonstrate that TIME consistently outperforms competitive baselines across both complete and incomplete tabular inputs, underscoring its practical value in real-world multimodal learning scenarios.