ArticleNPJ digital medicine2025
Specialized curricula for training vision language models in retinal image analysis.
Article in NPJ digital medicine, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- A Rationale-Conditioned Image-Contrast Audit of OCT Dependence in Vision-Language Models for Anti-VEGF Treatment-Response Prediction.Bioengineering (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Learning like a radiologist: a medical vision-language model for radiological image analysis via curriculum learning.NPJ digital medicine · 2026Article
- Promises and challenges of applying large language models in the healthcare domain.Frontiers in digital health · 2026Review
- Compact vision language models enable efficient and interpretable optical coherence tomography through layer-specific multimodal learning.Communications medicine · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
18 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Clinicians spend significant time reviewing medical images and transcribing findings. By integrating visual and textual data, foundation models have the potential to reduce workloads and boost efficiency, yet their practical clinical value remains uncertain. In this study, we find that OpenAI's ChatGPT-4o and two medical vision-language models (VLMs) significantly underperform ophthalmologists in key tasks for age-related macular degeneration (AMD). To address this, we developed a dedicated training curriculum, designed by domain specialists, to optimize VLMs for tasks related to clinical decision making. The resulting model, RetinaVLM-Specialist, significantly outperforms foundation medical VLMs and ChatGPT-4o in AMD disease staging (F1: 0.63 vs. 0.33) and referral (0.67 vs. 0.50), achieving performance comparable to junior ophthalmologists. In a reader study, two senior ophthalmologists confirmed that RetinaVLM's reports were substantially more accurate than those written by ChatGPT-4o (64.3% vs. 14.3%). Overall, our curriculum-based approach offers a blueprint for adapting foundation models to real-world medical applications.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.