Vision–Language Models in Medical Imaging for Cancer Diagnosis: A Bibliometric Review

Abstract

The demand for advanced detection methods and accurate staging remains a global challenge in cancer diagnosis. Even though traditional deep learning models in medical imaging achieve high precision, they suffer from limited explainability and multimodal reasoning due to their black-box nature, thereby limiting their clinical applicability. To address this gap, recent research has increasingly explored multimodal approaches that integrate visual and textual clinical data to enhance diagnostic accuracy and interpretability. This study presents a bibliometric analysis of 408 publications from 2021 to 2025, collected from Web of Science and Scopus, using VOSviewer and R-Bibliometrix to map citation networks, co-authorship, and keyword co-occurrences. The results reveal a rapid growth from 1 publication in 2021 to 269 in 2025, with significant contributions from leading countries and institutions. Thematic analysis indicates a shift from conventional convolutional approaches toward transformer-based and self-supervised methods, alongside increasing attention to multimodal learning in cancer imaging tasks such as breast, lung, and brain cancer analysis. Overall, this study provides a structured overview of the evolving research landscape, highlighting key trends, emerging themes, and research gaps to inform future developments in multimodal artificial intelligence for cancer diagnosis.