Scientific images are the core elements of presenting experimental conclusions, elaborating system architecture, and supporting comparative arguments in scientific papers. However, existing image quality assessment (IQA) methods are predominantly designed for natural photographs or AI-generated content, which cannot be directly applied to scientific papers.
arXiv:2607. 27066v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Scientific figure assessment in peer review differs fundamentally from general image quality evaluation: a figure must be visually legible, faithfully support the manuscript's claims, and communicate evidence with a clear visual hierarchy.
By Chuanzhi Xu, Zihan Deng, Huiqi Liang, Chengkun Yue, Zhanlin Cui, Pengfei Ye, Weidong Cai
arXiv:2606. 28406v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Text-to-image and multimodal generative models are increasingly used to produce scientific figures such as mechanism diagrams, experimental-design schematics, conceptual frameworks, and graphical abstracts.
By Davie Chen
The paper introduces a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) framework for scientific image quality assessment, targeting both the understanding (SIQA-U) and scoring (SIQA-S) tracks of the SIQA challenge. It builds a multimodal index that merges textual semantics with fine‑grained visual features and employs a multi‑route retrieval and fusion mechanism to supply large language models with relevant reference cases, improving their evaluation of complex scientific images. The approach aligns well with human expert judgment and secured first place in the SIQA-U track at the ICME 2026 Grand Challenges.
By Yinuo Zhang, Bingshuo Liu, Zhiying Tu, Dianhui Chu, Qingbin Liu, Xi Chen, Jiang Bian, Xiaoyan Yu, Dianbo Sui
arXiv:2606. 16092v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Real-world documents combine text with tables, charts, photographs, and diagrams arranged in diverse layouts, yet existing research on multimodal large language models (MLLMs) for document QA predominantly produces text-only responses, underutilizing these visual elements.
By Young Rok Jang, Hyesoo Kong, Kyunghwan An, Jae Sub Huh, Gyeonghun Kim, Stanley Jungkyu Choi
This paper proposes a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) framework for scientific image quality assessment, designed to simultaneously address both the understanding track (SIQA-U) and the scoring t...
arXiv:2606. 29667v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The materials science literature encodes decades of experimental knowledge in figures, yet this visual record remains locked away and inaccessible to AI at scale.
By Subham Ghosh, Shubham Tiwari, Mohammad Ibrahim, Abhishek Tewari
ReFigBench is a benchmark that evaluates how well multimodal coding agents can transform scientific overview figures into editable PowerPoint slides, preserving text, layout, and document structure. The study uses 1,000 real figures from arXiv, testing agents from four model families across two workflows—direct code generation and a specialized PPTX workflow—within ten different harness configurations. Evaluation combines deterministic artifact checks, automated scoring by judges, and blinded human comparisons, revealing that workflow and harness choices significantly affect reconstruction quality and that even the best agents fall short of the ideal rubric.
By Liyang Fan, Chi Wei, Yitai Li, Xinping Bi, Guhong Chen, Chenghao Sun, Haoxiang Yang, Qingwen Li, Kai Yan, Hong Li, Bo Li
arXiv:2607. 16131v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Multimodal Scientific Claim Verification (MSCV) requires models to verify scientific claims using visually grounded evidence from papers, including figures, tables, charts, and textual context.
By Binglin Zhou, Peng Shi, Ryo Kamoi, Nan Zhang, Rui Zhang
The paper introduces Redemption Score (RS), a multi‑modal evaluation framework for image captioning that combines three complementary signals: Mutual Information Divergence for global image‑text alignment, DINO‑based perceptual similarity of cycle‑generated images for visual grounding, and LLM text embeddings for contextual similarity to human references. RS fuses these signals to provide a more holistic assessment, achieving a Kendall‑τ of 58.42 on Flickr8k and outperforming most prior methods. The framework demonstrates consistent performance across Conceptual Captions and MS COCO, offering a robust evaluation that captures both visual accuracy and text quality.
By Ashim Dahal, Ankit Ghimire, Saydul Akbar Murad, Nick Rahimi
While Text-to-Image (T2I) models have shown remarkable success in generating photorealistic visual content, they still struggle with the rigorous semantic alignment and logical reasoning required for scientific imagery. Inspired by Peirce's Semiotic Triad, we introduce Scientific Image Reasoning (SciIR), a comprehensive resource for training and evaluation of scientific image generation.
arXiv:2608. 14075v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Scientific figures and tables encode essential experimental evidence, yet remain difficult for digital libraries and multimodal AI systems to retrieve and interpret.
By Jennifer D'Souza, Fahad Ahmed, Cecilia Andrea Bustamante Andrade, Lina Frolova, Poorani Gnanasambandan, Dilshad Hussain, Muhammad Uzair Khan, Nkembeng Kevin Nkengfoa, Paul Praveen J., Fabio Priante, Sjoerd Franciscus van der Werf, Thomas Frederik Jan van Roeden