OpenThinkIMG: Learning to Think with Images via Visual Tool
  Reinforcement Learning
Authors: name: Zhaochen Su; name: Linjie Li; name: Mingyang Song; name: Yunzhuo Hao; name: Zhengyuan Yang; name: Jun Zhang; name: Guanjie Chen; name: Jiawei Gu; name: Juntao Li; name: Xiaoye Qu; name: Yu Cheng
Published: 2025-05-13 14:35:51

Abstract: While humans can flexibly leverage interactive visual cognition for complex
problem-solving, enabling Large Vision-Language Models (LVLMs) to learn
similarly adaptive behaviors with visual tools remains challenging. A
significant hurdle is the current lack of standardized infrastructure, which
hinders integrating diverse tools, generating rich interaction data, and
training robust agents effectively. To address these gaps, we introduce
OpenThinkIMG, the first open-source, comprehensive end-to-end framework for
tool-augmented LVLMs. It features standardized vision tool interfaces, scalable
trajectory generation for policy initialization, and a flexible training
environment. Furthermore, considering supervised fine-tuning (SFT) on static
demonstrations offers limited policy generalization for dynamic tool
invocation, we propose a novel reinforcement learning (RL) framework V-ToolRL
to train LVLMs to learn adaptive policies for invoking external vision tools.
V-ToolRL enables LVLMs to autonomously discover optimal tool-usage strategies
by directly optimizing for task success using feedback from tool interactions.
We empirically validate V-ToolRL on challenging chart reasoning tasks. Our
RL-trained agent, built upon a Qwen2-VL-2B, significantly outperforms its
SFT-initialized counterpart (+28.83 points) and surpasses established
supervised tool-learning baselines like Taco and CogCom by an average of +12.7
points. Notably, it also surpasses prominent closed-source models like GPT-4.1
by +8.68 accuracy points. We hope OpenThinkIMG can serve as a foundational
framework for advancing dynamic, tool-augmented visual reasoning, helping the
community develop AI agents that can genuinely "think with images".