MedGemma 1.5 4B
MedGemma 1.5 4B is a multimodal foundation model developed by Google Research. It has a parameter scale of approximately 40.0B and supports a long context window of 128K.
Parameters
40.0B
Context Window
128K
License
Apache 2.0
Release Date
2026-01-13
API Pricing
API pricing for this model is not yet available
Strengths
- ・Advanced multimodal capabilities
- ・128K long context processing capacity
- ・Apache 2.0 open-source license
Weaknesses
- ・40.0B computational resource load
- ・Limited specialization in specific domains
- ・Lack of real-time update capability
Use Cases
- ・Multimodal analysis of medical data
- ・Summarization and analysis of long professional documents
- ・Open-source medical AI development
Deep Analysis
Parameters
4B
Updated version of MedGemma 1 4B with expanded capabilities
Release Date
January 2026
MedGemma 1.5 update
New Capabilities
CT/MRI, WSI, longitudinal imaging
3D volume interpretation, whole-slide histopathology, longitudinal chest X-rays
Anatomical Localization
Bounding box support
Can localize anatomical features in chest X-rays
EHR Understanding
Yes
Interprets text-based Electronic Health Record data
Lab Report Extraction
Yes
Extracts structured data from unstructured medical lab reports
License
HAI-DEF Terms of Use
Health AI Developer Foundations license
Base Model
Gemma 3
With medically optimized SigLIP image encoder
Strengths
- ・Expands MedGemma 1 4B with CT/MRI 3D imaging, whole-slide histopathology, and longitudinal imaging
- ・Bounding box anatomical localization in chest X-rays
- ・Structured data extraction from unstructured lab reports
- ・EHR text interpretation capability
- ・Improved accuracy on medical text reasoning vs MedGemma 1 4B
- ・Runs on mobile/edge hardware
Weaknesses
- ・Only available as 4B multimodal instruction-tuned variant (no larger sizes for 1.5)
- ・HAI-DEF license more restrictive than Apache 2.0
- ・Limited to text output (no image generation)
- ・Requires fine-tuning for optimal clinical performance
- ・New capabilities may have limited benchmark coverage
Competitor Comparison
| Model | Arena | SWE | GPQA | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MedGemma 1.5 4B | N/A | N/A | ~67% (MedQA est) | Free (open weights) |
| MedGemma 1 4B | N/A | N/A | 64.4% (MedQA) | Free (open weights) |
| MedGemma 1 27B | N/A | N/A | 87.7% (MedQA) | Free (open weights) |
| BioMistral 7B | N/A | N/A | ~60% (MedQA) | Free (open weights) |
MedGemma 1.5 4B is the updated version of MedGemma 1 4B, expanding medical AI capabilities to include 3D CT/MRI interpretation, whole-slide histopathology, longitudinal chest X-ray comparison, anatomical bounding box localization, and structured lab report extraction. Released January 2026.
Sources
Analysis generated: 2026-05-24