V-Thinker: Interactive Thinking with Images
On the map: LLM reasoning → Multimodal reasoning
Abstract (arXiv)
Empowering Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) to deeply integrate image interaction with long-horizon reasoning capabilities remains a long-standing challenge in this field. Recent advances in vision-centric reasoning explore a promising "Thinking with Images" paradigm for LMMs, marking a shift from image-assisted reasoning to image-interactive thinking. While this milestone enables models to focus on fine-grained image regions, progress remains constrained by limited visual tool spaces and task-specific workflow designs. To bridge this gap, we present V-Thinker, a general-purpose multimodal reasoning assistant that enables interactive, vision-centric thinking through end-to-end reinforcement learning. V-Thinker comprises two key components: (1) a Data Evolution Flywheel that automatically synthesizes, evolves, and verifies interactive reasoning datasets across three dimensions-diversity, quality, and difficulty; and (2) a Visual Progressive Training Curriculum that first aligns perception via point-level supervision, then integrates interactive reasoning through a two-stage reinforcement learning framework. Furthermore, we introduce VTBench, an expert-verified benchmark targeting vision-centric interactive reasoning tasks. Extensive experiments demonstrate that V-Thinker consistently outperforms strong LMM-based baselines in both general and interactive reasoning scenarios, providing valuable insights for advancing image-interactive reasoning applications.
Key facts. Cited by 26 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Multimodal reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 61 of its 78 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 6 Nov 2025.
Builds on
61 of 78 references.
Closest ancestors · 34
Same direction, newest first
- 2025MathCanvas: Intrinsic Visual Chain-of-Thought for Multimodal Mathematical Reasoning16 Oct
- 2025Look Less, Reason More: Rollout-Guided Adaptive Pixel-Space Reasoning2 Oct
- 2025DeepSketcher: Internalizing Visual Manipulation for Multimodal Reasoning30 Sep
- 2025From Perception to Cognition: A Survey of Vision-Language Interactive Reasoning in Multimodal Large Language Models29 Sep
- 2025Reinforced Visual Perception with Tools1 Sep
- 2025Self-Rewarding Vision-Language Model via Reasoning Decomposition27 Aug
- 2025InternVL3.5: Advancing Open-Source Multimodal Models in Versatility, Reasoning, and Efficiency25 Aug
- 2025Simple o3: Towards Interleaved Vision-Language Reasoning16 Aug
- 2025Thyme: Think Beyond Images15 Aug
- 2025We-Math 2.0: A Versatile MathBook System for Incentivizing Visual Mathematical Reasoning14 Aug
- 2025MathOPEval: A Fine-grained Evaluation Benchmark for Visual Operations of MLLMs in Mathematical Reasoning24 Jul
- 2025Thinking with Images for Multimodal Reasoning: Foundations, Methods, and Future Frontiers30 Jun
22 more
- 2025WeThink: Toward General-purpose Vision-Language Reasoning via Reinforcement Learning9 Jun
- 2025SRPO: Enhancing Multimodal LLM Reasoning via Reflection-Aware Reinforcement Learning2 Jun
- 2025VTool-R1: VLMs Learn to Think with Images via Reinforcement Learning on Multimodal Tool Use25 May
- 2025MathCoder-VL: Bridging Vision and Code for Enhanced Multimodal Mathematical Reasoning15 May
- 2025VisuLogic: A Benchmark for Evaluating Visual Reasoning in Multi-modal Large Language Models21 Apr
- 2025NoisyRollout: Reinforcing Visual Reasoning with Data Augmentation17 Apr
- 2025SFT or RL? An Early Investigation into Training R1-Like Reasoning Large Vision-Language Models10 Apr
- 2025SoTA with Less: MCTS-Guided Sample Selection for Data-Efficient Visual Reasoning Self-Improvement10 Apr
- 2025R1-Onevision: Advancing Generalized Multimodal Reasoning through Cross-Modal Formalization13 Mar
- 2025MM-Eureka: Exploring the Frontiers of Multimodal Reasoning with Rule-based Reinforcement Learning10 Mar
- 2025Vision-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in Multimodal Large Language Models9 Mar
- 2024Progressive Multimodal Reasoning via Active Retrieval19 Dec
- 2024DynaMath: A Dynamic Visual Benchmark for Evaluating Mathematical Reasoning Robustness of Vision Language Models29 Oct
- 2024CMM-Math: A Chinese Multimodal Math Dataset To Evaluate and Enhance the Mathematics Reasoning of Large Multimodal Models4 Sep
- 2024Math-PUMA: Progressive Upward Multimodal Alignment to Enhance Mathematical Reasoning16 Aug
- 2024LogicVista: Multimodal LLM Logical Reasoning Benchmark in Visual Contexts6 Jul
- 2024We-Math: Does Your Large Multimodal Model Achieve Human-like Mathematical Reasoning?1 Jul
- 2024Math-LLaVA: Bootstrapping Mathematical Reasoning for Multimodal Large Language Models25 Jun
- 2024Visual Sketchpad: Sketching as a Visual Chain of Thought for Multimodal Language Models13 Jun
- 2024Measuring Multimodal Mathematical Reasoning with MATH-Vision Dataset22 Feb
- 2023MathVista: Evaluating Mathematical Reasoning of Foundation Models in Visual Contexts3 Oct
- 2022Interactive Visual Reasoning under Uncertainty18 Jun
Other references · 27
- 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 8,851
- 2025Qwen2.5-VL Technical Reportcited by 5,418
- 2023Improved Baselines with Visual Instruction Tuningcited by 4,362
- 2025InternVL3: Exploring Advanced Training and Test-Time Recipes for Open-Source Multimodal Modelscited by 1,769
- 2024MathVerse: Does Your Multi-modal LLM Truly See the Diagrams in Visual Math Problems?cited by 573
- 2024DeepSeek-VL2: Mixture-of-Experts Vision-Language Models for Advanced Multimodal Understandingcited by 559
- 2024VLMEvalKit: An Open-Source Toolkit for Evaluating Large Multi-Modality Modelscited by 443
- 2025Seed1.5-VL Technical Reportcited by 367
- 2024A Survey on Hallucination in Large Vision-Language Modelscited by 352
- 2025R1-VL: Learning to Reason with Multimodal Large Language Models via Step-wise Group Relative Policy Optimizationcited by 296
- 2025LLaVA-OneVision-1.5: Fully Open Framework for Democratized Multimodal Trainingcited by 233
- 2024CharXiv: Charting Gaps in Realistic Chart Understanding in Multimodal LLMscited by 229
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- 2024Self-play with Execution Feedback: Improving Instruction-following Capabilities of Large Language Modelscited by 73
- 2023Image Denoising: The Deep Learning Revolution and Beyond -- A Survey Paper --cited by 71
- 2025PyVision: Agentic Vision with Dynamic Toolingcited by 71
- 2025Tool-Star: Empowering LLM-Brained Multi-Tool Reasoner via Reinforcement Learningcited by 67
- 2024CS-Bench: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Large Language Models towards Computer Science Masterycited by 30
- 2024Understand What LLM Needs: Dual Preference Alignment for Retrieval-Augmented Generationcited by 27
- 2025Video-STAR: Reinforcing Open-Vocabulary Action Recognition with Toolscited by 23
- 2025M2-Reasoning: Empowering MLLMs with Unified General and Spatial Reasoningcited by 16
- 2025Geoint-R1: Formalizing Multimodal Geometric Reasoning with Dynamic Auxiliary Constructionscited by 10
- 2024Toward General Instruction-Following Alignment for Retrieval-Augmented Generationcited by 9
- 2025Poison as Cure: Visual Noise for Mitigating Object Hallucinations in LVMscited by 9
- 2025GeoSketch: A Neural-Symbolic Approach to Geometric Multimodal Reasoning with Auxiliary Line Construction and Affine Transformationcited by 6
- 2025ToolScope: An Agentic Framework for Vision-Guided and Long-Horizon Tool Usecited by 2
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Citing papers per year: 2025: 1; 2026: 25.
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- 2026Act Wisely: Cultivating Meta-Cognitive Tool Use in Agentic Multimodal Modelscited by 13
- 2026VTC-Bench: Evaluating Agentic Multimodal Models via Compositional Visual Tool Chainingcited by 12
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- 2026Aphanta: Diagnosing Task-Aligned Image-Edited Intermediates for Multimodal Reasoning27 Aug 2026
- 2026PeCA: Palette Context Assisted Inference for Test-Time Paint-Bucket Colourisation on Animation Videos2 Aug 2026
- 2026Beacon: Knowing When and How to Perform Agentic Visual Reasoning30 Jul 2026
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- 2026VideoSearcher: Empowering Video Deep Research with Multi-Tool Agentic Reasoning via Reinforcement Learning3 Jul 2026
- 2026Dynamo: Dynamic Skill-Tool Evolution for Vision-Language Agents29 Jun 2026
- 2026TVI-CoT: Text-Visual Interleaved Chain-of-Thought Reasoning for Multimodal Understanding7 Jun 2026
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- 2026ATLAS: Agentic or Latent Visual Reasoning? One Word is Enough for Both14 May 2026
- 2026Self-Consistent Latent Reasoning: Long Latent Sequence Reasoning for Vision-Language Model12 May 2026
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- 2026ET-Agent: Incentivizing Effective Tool-Integrated Reasoning Agent via Behavior Calibration11 Jan 2026
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- 2026ET-Agent: Incentivizing Effective Tool-Integrated Reasoning Agent via Behavior Calibrationcited by 4
- 2026Self-Consistent Latent Reasoning: Long Latent Sequence Reasoning for Vision-Language Modelcited by 3
- 2026TVI-CoT: Text-Visual Interleaved Chain-of-Thought Reasoning for Multimodal Understandingcited by 3
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- 2026Dynamo: Dynamic Skill-Tool Evolution for Vision-Language Agentscited by 1
- 2026Beacon: Knowing When and How to Perform Agentic Visual Reasoningcited by 1
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12 most cited of 16 All 16 (JSON)
- 2026MM-OPD: Towards One More Bottleneck Between Perception and Reasoning26 Sep 2026
- 2026Multimodal Thinking with Renderable Programs24 Sep 2026
- 2026Aphanta: Diagnosing Task-Aligned Image-Edited Intermediates for Multimodal Reasoning27 Aug 2026
- 2026Beacon: Knowing When and How to Perform Agentic Visual Reasoning30 Jul 2026
- 2026See2Think: Do Multimodal Models Really Use Intermediate Visual States?29 Jul 2026
- 2026VideoSearcher: Empowering Video Deep Research with Multi-Tool Agentic Reasoning via Reinforcement Learning3 Jul 2026
- 2026Dynamo: Dynamic Skill-Tool Evolution for Vision-Language Agents29 Jun 2026
- 2026TVI-CoT: Text-Visual Interleaved Chain-of-Thought Reasoning for Multimodal Understanding7 Jun 2026
- 2026Agent Explorative Policy Optimization for Multimodal Agentic Reasoning27 May 2026
- 2026ROVER: Routing Object-Centric Visual Evidence for Grounded Multi-Image Reasoning27 May 2026
- 2026ATLAS: Agentic or Latent Visual Reasoning? One Word is Enough for Both14 May 2026
- 2026Self-Consistent Latent Reasoning: Long Latent Sequence Reasoning for Vision-Language Model12 May 2026
12 newest of 16 All 16 (JSON)
- 2026VTC-Bench: Evaluating Agentic Multimodal Models via Compositional Visual Tool Chainingcited by 12
- 2026Reversing the Flow: Generation-to-Understanding Synergy in Large Multimodal Modelscited by 1
- 2026Making Every Tool Call Count: Necessary Tool-Evidence Path Rewards for Agentic Vision-Language Modelscited by 0
- 2026Making Every Tool Call Count: Necessary Tool-Evidence Path Rewards for Agentic Vision-Language Models3 Sep 2026
- 2026Reversing the Flow: Generation-to-Understanding Synergy in Large Multimodal Models15 May 2026
- 2026VTC-Bench: Evaluating Agentic Multimodal Models via Compositional Visual Tool Chaining16 Mar 2026
- 2026VisRefiner: Learning from Visual Differences for Screenshot-to-Code Generationcited by 7
- 2026CiQi-Agent: Aligning Vision, Tools and Aesthetics in Multimodal Agent for Cultural Reasoning on Chinese Porcelainscited by 0
- 2026PeCA: Palette Context Assisted Inference for Test-Time Paint-Bucket Colourisation on Animation Videoscited by 0
- 2026SciGen-Verifier: A Multimodal Reasoner for Explainable Verification in Scientific Image Generationcited by 0
- 2026SciGen-Verifier: A Multimodal Reasoner for Explainable Verification in Scientific Image Generation27 Sep 2026
- 2026PeCA: Palette Context Assisted Inference for Test-Time Paint-Bucket Colourisation on Animation Videos2 Aug 2026
- 2026CiQi-Agent: Aligning Vision, Tools and Aesthetics in Multimodal Agent for Cultural Reasoning on Chinese Porcelains30 Mar 2026
- 2026VisRefiner: Learning from Visual Differences for Screenshot-to-Code Generation5 Feb 2026
Similar, not cited
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- 2026Visually-Guided Policy Optimization for Multimodal Reasoning
- 2025More Thought, Less Accuracy? On the Dual Nature of Reasoning in Vision-Language Models
- 2026VLA-Thinker: Boosting Vision-Language-Action Models through Thinking-with-Image Reasoning
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