Overcoming Vision Language Model Challenges in Diagram Understanding: A Proof-of-Concept with XML-Driven Large Language Models Solutions

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Main Authors: Shiinoki, Shue, Koshihara, Ryo, Motegi, Hayato, Morishige, Masumi
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Shiinoki, Shue
Koshihara, Ryo
Motegi, Hayato
Morishige, Masumi
author_facet Shiinoki, Shue
Koshihara, Ryo
Motegi, Hayato
Morishige, Masumi
contents Diagrams play a crucial role in visually conveying complex relationships and processes within business documentation. Despite recent advances in Vision-Language Models (VLMs) for various image understanding tasks, accurately identifying and extracting the structures and relationships depicted in diagrams continues to pose significant challenges. This study addresses these challenges by proposing a text-driven approach that bypasses reliance on VLMs' visual recognition capabilities. Instead, it utilizes the editable source files--such as xlsx, pptx or docx--where diagram elements (e.g., shapes, lines, annotations) are preserved as textual metadata. In our proof-of-concept, we extracted diagram information from xlsx-based system design documents and transformed the extracted shape data into textual input for Large Language Models (LLMs). This approach allowed the LLM to analyze relationships and generate responses to business-oriented questions without the bottleneck of image-based processing. Experimental comparisons with a VLM-based method demonstrated that the proposed text-driven framework yielded more accurate answers for questions requiring detailed comprehension of diagram structures.The results obtained in this study are not limited to the tested .xlsx files but can also be extended to diagrams in other documents with source files, such as Office pptx and docx formats. These findings highlight the feasibility of circumventing VLM constraints through direct textual extraction from original source files. By enabling robust diagram understanding through LLMs, our method offers a promising path toward enhanced workflow efficiency and information analysis in real-world business scenarios.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_04389
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Overcoming Vision Language Model Challenges in Diagram Understanding: A Proof-of-Concept with XML-Driven Large Language Models Solutions
Shiinoki, Shue
Koshihara, Ryo
Motegi, Hayato
Morishige, Masumi
Software Engineering
Artificial Intelligence
Diagrams play a crucial role in visually conveying complex relationships and processes within business documentation. Despite recent advances in Vision-Language Models (VLMs) for various image understanding tasks, accurately identifying and extracting the structures and relationships depicted in diagrams continues to pose significant challenges. This study addresses these challenges by proposing a text-driven approach that bypasses reliance on VLMs' visual recognition capabilities. Instead, it utilizes the editable source files--such as xlsx, pptx or docx--where diagram elements (e.g., shapes, lines, annotations) are preserved as textual metadata. In our proof-of-concept, we extracted diagram information from xlsx-based system design documents and transformed the extracted shape data into textual input for Large Language Models (LLMs). This approach allowed the LLM to analyze relationships and generate responses to business-oriented questions without the bottleneck of image-based processing. Experimental comparisons with a VLM-based method demonstrated that the proposed text-driven framework yielded more accurate answers for questions requiring detailed comprehension of diagram structures.The results obtained in this study are not limited to the tested .xlsx files but can also be extended to diagrams in other documents with source files, such as Office pptx and docx formats. These findings highlight the feasibility of circumventing VLM constraints through direct textual extraction from original source files. By enabling robust diagram understanding through LLMs, our method offers a promising path toward enhanced workflow efficiency and information analysis in real-world business scenarios.
title Overcoming Vision Language Model Challenges in Diagram Understanding: A Proof-of-Concept with XML-Driven Large Language Models Solutions
topic Software Engineering
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.04389