# Medical World Model: Generative Simulation of Tumor Evolution for Treatment Planning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.02327 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.02327/

## Key facts

- Cited by 34 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Medical and surgical world models, one of 11 directions in World models.
- Builds on 48 of its 80 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Jun 2025.

## Placed in

- World models / [Medical and surgical world models](https://mlsanity.com/wm/medical-and-surgical-world-models/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 48)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [Qwen2.5-VL Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.13923/) (2025)
- [GPT-4o System Card](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.21276/) (2024)
- [On the Opportunities and Risks of Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.07258/) (2021)
- [Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09672/) (2021)
- [Taming Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.09841/) (2020)
- [Stable Video Diffusion: Scaling Latent Video Diffusion Models to Large Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.15127/) (2023)
- [Large Language Models Encode Clinical Knowledge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.13138/) (2022)
- [World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.10122/) (2018)
- [Mastering Diverse Domains through World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.04104/) (2023)
- [A Closer Look at Spatiotemporal Convolutions for Action Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.11248/) (2017)
- [Genie: Generative Interactive Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.15391/) (2024)
- [GAIA-1: A Generative World Model for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.17080/) (2023)
- [TransMIL: Transformer based Correlated Multiple Instance Learning for Whole Slide Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.00908/) (2021)
- [MoCoGAN: Decomposing Motion and Content for Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.04993/) (2017)
- [The Liver Tumor Segmentation Benchmark (LiTS)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.04056/) (2019)
- [MONAI: An open-source framework for deep learning in healthcare](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.02701/) (2022)
- [DayDreamer: World Models for Physical Robot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.14176/) (2022)
- [MEDITRON-70B: Scaling Medical Pretraining for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16079/) (2023)
- [Navigation World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.03572/) (2024)
- [DriveDreamer: Towards Real-world-driven World Models for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.09777/) (2023)
- [Emu Video: Factorizing Text-to-Video Generation by Explicit Image Conditioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.10709/) (2023)
- [SynthSeg: Segmentation of brain MRI scans of any contrast and resolution without retraining](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.09559/) (2021)
- [CLIP-Driven Universal Model for Organ Segmentation and Tumor Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.00785/) (2023)
- [HuatuoGPT, towards Taming Language Model to Be a Doctor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15075/) (2023)
- [HuatuoGPT-Vision, Towards Injecting Medical Visual Knowledge into Multimodal LLMs at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.19280/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 34)

- [3D and 4D World Modeling: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.07996/) (2025)
- [Do World Action Models Generalize Better than VLAs? A Robustness Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.22078/) (2026)
- [Scaling Tumor Segmentation: Best Lessons from Real and Synthetic Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.14831/) (2025)
- [Medical Reasoning in the Era of LLMs: A Systematic Review of Enhancement Techniques and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.00669/) (2025)
- [Beyond Generative AI: World Models for Clinical Prediction, Counterfactuals, and Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.16333/) (2025)
- [Agentic Environment Engineering for Large Language Models: A Survey of Environment Modeling, Synthesis, Evaluation, and Application](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.12191/) (2026)
- [CLARITY: Medical World Model for Guiding Treatment Decisions by Simulating Context-Aware Disease Trajectories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.08029/) (2025)
- [Brain-WM: Brain Glioblastoma World Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.07562/) (2026)
- [A Definition and Roadmap for World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.06401/) (2026)
- [From Generative Engines to Actionable Simulators: The Imperative of Physical Grounding in World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.15533/) (2026)
- [MRI Contrast Enhancement Kinetics World Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.19285/) (2026)
- [From Articulated Kinematics to Routed Visual Control for Action-Conditioned Surgical Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.08712/) (2026)
- [Medical world models: representing medical states, modelling clinical dynamics and guiding intervention policies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.16721/) (2026)
- [DreamReg: Belief-Driven World Model for 2D-3D Ultrasound Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.18825/) (2026)
- [Medical world models in healthcare: foundations, applications, and challenges for trustworthy clinical translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.25242/) (2026)
- [Generative AI for Healthcare: Fundamentals, Challenges, and Perspectives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.24551/) (2025)
- [See More, Change Less: Anatomy-Aware Diffusion for Contrast Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.07251/) (2025)
- [World Models: A Comprehensive Survey of Architectures, Methodologies, Reasoning Paradigms, and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.00133/) (2026)
- [X-WIN: Building Chest Radiograph World Model via Predictive Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.14918/) (2025)
- [Beyond Patient Invariance: Learning Cardiac Dynamics via Action-Conditioned JEPAs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.22618/) (2026)
- [CECT-Mamba: a Hierarchical Contrast-enhanced-aware Model for Pancreatic Tumor Subtyping from Multi-phase CECT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.12777/) (2025)
- [Learning Label-Efficient Interpretable Medical Image Diagnosis via Semi-supervised Hypergraph Concept Bottleneck Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.01698/) (2026)
- [SurgVista: Long-Horizon Surgical World Modeling with Plausible Instrument-Tissue Dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.19889/) (2026)
- [ShapeKit](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.24003/) (2025)
- [MicroVerse: A Preliminary Exploration Toward a Micro-World Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.00585/) (2026)
- [EyeWorld: A Generative World Model of Ocular State and Dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.14039/) (2026)
- [Distilling Photon-Counting CT into Routine Chest CT through Clinically Validated Degradation Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.07329/) (2026)
- [3D MRI Image Pretraining via Controllable 2D Slice Navigation Task](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.06487/) (2026)
- [HounsWorld: A Multimodal World Model for Hidden Patient-State Readout, Reconstruction, and Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.12904/) (2026)
- [Physiological World Models for Human State Transitions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.15309/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Providing effective treatment and making informed clinical decisions are essential goals of modern medicine and clinical care. We are interested in simulating disease dynamics for clinical decision-making, leveraging recent advances in large generative models. To this end, we introduce the Medical World Model (MeWM), the first world model in medicine that visually predicts future disease states based on clinical decisions. MeWM comprises (i) vision-language models to serve as policy models, and (ii) tumor generative models as dynamics models. The policy model generates action plans, such as clinical treatments, while the dynamics model simulates tumor progression or regression under given treatment conditions. Building on this, we propose the inverse dynamics model that applies survival analysis to the simulated post-treatment tumor, enabling the evaluation of treatment efficacy and the selection of the optimal clinical action plan. As a result, the proposed MeWM simulates disease dynamics by synthesizing post-treatment tumors, with state-of-the-art specificity in Turing tests evaluated by radiologists. Simultaneously, its inverse dynamics model outperforms medical-specialized GPTs in optimizing individualized treatment protocols across all metrics. Notably, MeWM improves clinical decision-making for interventional physicians, boosting F1-score in selecting the optimal TACE protocol by 13%, paving the way for future integration of medical world models as the second readers.