mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

PixelCraft: A Multi-Agent System for High-Fidelity Visual Reasoning on Structured Images

arXiv 2509.25185 ↗First posted 29 Sep 2025cs.CVcited by 12

On the map: LLM reasoning → Multimodal reasoning

also in 2 more
Abstract (arXiv)

Structured images (e.g., charts and geometric diagrams) remain challenging for multimodal large language models (MLLMs), as perceptual slips can cascade into erroneous conclusions. Intermediate visual cues can steer reasoning; however, existing cue-based methods are constrained with low-fidelity image processing and linear, rigid reasoning patterns, limiting their effectiveness on complex structured-image tasks. In this paper, we propose PixelCraft, a novel multi-agent system for high-fidelity image processing and flexible visual reasoning on structured images. The system comprises a dispatcher, a planner, a reasoner, critics, and a set of visual tool agents. To achieve high-fidelity processing, we construct a high-quality corpus and fine-tune an MLLM into a grounding model, whose pixel-level localizations are integrated with traditional computer vision (CV) algorithms in tool agents. Building on this foundation, PixelCraft facilitates flexible visual reasoning through a dynamic three-stage workflow of tool selection, agent discussion, and self-criticism. Moreover, unlike prior linear reasoning patterns that simply append historical images, PixelCraft maintains an image memory to allow the planner to adaptively revisit earlier visual steps, explore alternative reasoning branches, and dynamically adjust the reasoning trajectory during discussion. Extensive experiments on challenging chart and geometry benchmarks demonstrate that PixelCraft significantly improves visual reasoning performance for advanced MLLMs, setting a new standard for structured image reasoning. Our code will be available at https://github.com/microsoft/PixelCraft.

Key facts. Cited by 12 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Multimodal reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 46 of its 50 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 29 Sep 2025.

Builds on

46 of 50 references.

Closest ancestors · 18

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Chart-R1: Chain-of-Thought Supervision and Reinforcement for Advanced Chart Reasoner21 Jul
  2. 2025PeRL: Permutation-Enhanced Reinforcement Learning for Interleaved Vision-Language Reasoning17 Jun
  3. 2025OpenThinkIMG: Learning to Think with Images via Visual Tool Reinforcement Learning13 May
  4. 2025Perception, Reason, Think, and Plan: A Survey on Large Multimodal Reasoning Models8 May
  5. 2025Chain of Functions: A Programmatic Pipeline for Fine-Grained Chart Reasoning Data20 Mar
  6. 2025Multimodal Chain-of-Thought Reasoning: A Comprehensive Survey16 Mar
  7. 2025ReFocus: Visual Editing as a Chain of Thought for Structured Image Understanding9 Jan
  8. 2024Visual Sketchpad: Sketching as a Visual Chain of Thought for Multimodal Language Models13 Jun
  9. 2024MMCTAgent: Multi-modal Critical Thinking Agent Framework for Complex Visual Reasoning28 May
  10. 2024Image-of-Thought Prompting for Visual Reasoning Refinement in Multimodal Large Language Models22 May
  11. 2024Cantor: Inspiring Multimodal Chain-of-Thought of MLLM24 Apr
  12. 2024Chain-of-Spot: Interactive Reasoning Improves Large Vision-Language Models19 Mar
6 more
  1. 2024ChartInstruct: Instruction Tuning for Chart Comprehension and Reasoning14 Mar
  2. 2023Chain of Images for Intuitively Reasoning9 Nov
  3. 2023MM-REACT: Prompting ChatGPT for Multimodal Reasoning and Action20 Mar
  4. 2023ViperGPT: Visual Inference via Python Execution for Reasoning14 Mar
  5. 2022MatCha: Enhancing Visual Language Pretraining with Math Reasoning and Chart Derendering19 Dec
  6. 2022ChartQA: A Benchmark for Question Answering about Charts with Visual and Logical Reasoning19 Mar

Other references · 28

  1. 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,459
  2. 2022Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Modelscited by 5,708
  3. 2025Qwen2.5-VL Technical Reportcited by 5,587
  4. 2024GPT-4o System Cardcited by 4,588
  5. 2023AutoGen: Enabling Next-Gen LLM Applications via Multi-Agent Conversationcited by 1,988
  6. 2023Improving Factuality and Reasoning in Language Models through Multiagent Debatecited by 1,784
  7. 2023CAMEL: Communicative Agents for "Mind" Exploration of Large Language Model Societycited by 1,395
  8. 2025Qwen3 Embedding: Advancing Text Embedding and Reranking Through Foundation Modelscited by 1,261
  9. 2023Encouraging Divergent Thinking in Large Language Models through Multi-Agent Debatecited by 1,011
  10. 2023A Survey on Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 909
  11. 2024AFlow: Automating Agentic Workflow Generationcited by 432
  12. 2021Inter-GPS: Interpretable Geometry Problem Solving with Formal Language and Symbolic Reasoningcited by 383
16 more
  1. 2022Pix2Struct: Screenshot Parsing as Pretraining for Visual Language Understandingcited by 366
  2. 2023Character-LLM: A Trainable Agent for Role-Playingcited by 339
  3. 2023ReConcile: Round-Table Conference Improves Reasoning via Consensus among Diverse LLMscited by 309
  4. 2023Set-of-Mark Prompting Unleashes Extraordinary Visual Grounding in GPT-4Vcited by 299
  5. 2024CharXiv: Charting Gaps in Realistic Chart Understanding in Multimodal LLMscited by 234
  6. 2023ChartLlama: A Multimodal LLM for Chart Understanding and Generationcited by 163
  7. 2024MDAgents: An Adaptive Collaboration of LLMs for Medical Decision-Makingcited by 163
  8. 2025Advances and Challenges in Foundation Agents: From Brain-Inspired Intelligence to Evolutionary, Collaborative, and Safe Systemscited by 126
  9. 2025ChartQAPro: A More Diverse and Challenging Benchmark for Chart Question Answeringcited by 108
  10. 2024ChartAssisstant: A Universal Chart Multimodal Language Model via Chart-to-Table Pre-training and Multitask Instruction Tuningcited by 79
  11. 2024ChartGemma: Visual Instruction-tuning for Chart Reasoning in the Wildcited by 79
  12. 2024DetToolChain: A New Prompting Paradigm to Unleash Detection Ability of MLLMcited by 46
  13. 2024ChartMoE: Mixture of Diversely Aligned Expert Connector for Chart Understandingcited by 46
  14. 2024EvoChart: A Benchmark and a Self-Training Approach Towards Real-World Chart Understandingcited by 34
  15. 2025Identifying and Mitigating Position Bias of Multi-image Vision-Language Modelscited by 25
  16. 2024GeoX: Geometric Problem Solving Through Unified Formalized Vision-Language Pre-trainingcited by 23

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 3; 2026: 9.

12 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025Analyze-Prompt-Reason: A Collaborative Agent-Based Framework for Multi-Image Vision-Language Reasoning
  2. 2025Diagnosing Visual Reasoning: Challenges, Insights, and a Path Forward
  3. 2026VLM-in-Sandbox: Visual Workspaces for Agentic Visual Reasoning
  4. 2026FaithEyes: Towards Faithful Tool Use via Multi-Agent Process-Image Verification
  5. 2026Insight-V++: Towards Advanced Long-Chain Visual Reasoning with Multimodal Large Language Models
  6. 2026Beacon: Knowing When and How to Perform Agentic Visual Reasoning
  7. 2025Orion: A Unified Visual Agent for Multimodal Perception, Advanced Visual Reasoning and Execution
  8. 2026Visual Para-Thinker++: A Single-Policy Multi-Agent Framework for Visual Reasoning