diff --git a/tests/test-mtmd-c-api.c b/tests/test-mtmd-c-api.c
index 02e762e6a..7a0ce593c 100644
--- a/tests/test-mtmd-c-api.c
+++ b/tests/test-mtmd-c-api.c
@@ -41,8 +41,10 @@ int main(void) {
         } else if (type == MTMD_INPUT_CHUNK_TYPE_IMAGE) {
             const mtmd_image_tokens * image_tokens = mtmd_input_chunk_get_tokens_image(chunk);
             size_t n_tokens = mtmd_image_tokens_get_n_tokens(image_tokens);
-            size_t nx = mtmd_image_tokens_get_nx(image_tokens);
-            size_t ny = mtmd_image_tokens_get_ny(image_tokens);
+            // get position of the last token, which should be (nx - 1, ny - 1)
+            struct mtmd_decoder_pos pos = mtmd_image_tokens_get_decoder_pos(image_tokens, n_tokens - 1);
+            size_t nx = pos.x + 1;
+            size_t ny = pos.y + 1;
             const char * id = mtmd_image_tokens_get_id(image_tokens);
             assert(n_tokens > 0);
             assert(nx > 0);
diff --git a/tools/mtmd/mtmd-helper.cpp b/tools/mtmd/mtmd-helper.cpp
index 2f45dab44..145b88cea 100644
--- a/tools/mtmd/mtmd-helper.cpp
+++ b/tools/mtmd/mtmd-helper.cpp
@@ -114,6 +114,13 @@ llama_pos mtmd_helper_get_n_pos(const mtmd_input_chunks * chunks) {
     return n_pos;
 }
 
+void mtmd_helper_image_get_decoder_pos(const mtmd_image_tokens * chunks, mtmd_decoder_pos * out_pos) {
+    size_t n_tokens = mtmd_image_tokens_get_n_tokens(chunks);
+    for (size_t i = 0; i < n_tokens; i++) {
+        out_pos[i] = mtmd_image_tokens_get_decoder_pos(chunks, i);
+    }
+}
+
 // helper struct to make working with embd batch easier
 // note: this will be removed after llama_batch_ext refactoring
 struct decode_embd_batch {
@@ -156,18 +163,15 @@ struct decode_embd_batch {
     }
 
     // M-RoPE for image
-    void set_position_mrope_2d(llama_pos pos_0, int nx, int ny, llama_seq_id seq_id) {
+    void set_position_mrope_2d(llama_pos pos_0, const std::vector<mtmd_decoder_pos> & rel_pos, llama_seq_id seq_id) {
         GGML_ASSERT(n_pos_per_embd == 4);
-        GGML_ASSERT(nx > 0 && ny > 0 && nx * ny == batch.n_tokens);
+        GGML_ASSERT(!rel_pos.empty() && (int32_t)rel_pos.size() == batch.n_tokens);
         seq_id_0[0] = seq_id;
-        for (int y = 0; y < ny; y++) {
-            for (int x = 0; x < nx; x++) {
-                int i = y * nx + x;
-                pos[i                     ] = pos_0;
-                pos[i + batch.n_tokens    ] = pos_0 + y;
-                pos[i + batch.n_tokens * 2] = pos_0 + x;
-                pos[i + batch.n_tokens * 3] = 0; // last pos dim is unused
-            }
+        for (int32_t i = 0; i < batch.n_tokens; i++) {
+            pos[i                     ] = pos_0 + rel_pos[i].t;
+            pos[i + batch.n_tokens    ] = pos_0 + rel_pos[i].y;
+            pos[i + batch.n_tokens * 2] = pos_0 + rel_pos[i].x;
+            pos[i + batch.n_tokens * 3] = 0; // last pos dim is unused
         }
         for (int i = 0; i < batch.n_tokens; i++) {
             batch.n_seq_id[i] = 1;
@@ -262,9 +266,10 @@ int32_t mtmd_helper_decode_image_chunk(
                 LOG_ERR("failed to decode chunk: image tokens are null\n");
                 return -1;
             }
-            const int nx = mtmd_image_tokens_get_nx(image_tokens);
-            const int ny = mtmd_image_tokens_get_ny(image_tokens);
-            batch_embd.set_position_mrope_2d(n_past, nx, ny, seq_id);
+            const auto n_tokens = mtmd_image_tokens_get_n_tokens(image_tokens);
+            std::vector<mtmd_decoder_pos> rel_pos(n_tokens);
+            mtmd_helper_image_get_decoder_pos(image_tokens, rel_pos.data());
+            batch_embd.set_position_mrope_2d(n_past, rel_pos, seq_id);
         } else if (chunk_type == MTMD_INPUT_CHUNK_TYPE_AUDIO) {
             batch_embd.set_position_mrope_1d(n_past, seq_id);
         } else {
diff --git a/tools/mtmd/mtmd-helper.h b/tools/mtmd/mtmd-helper.h
index 5036b9244..8cadf42b4 100644
--- a/tools/mtmd/mtmd-helper.h
+++ b/tools/mtmd/mtmd-helper.h
@@ -47,6 +47,10 @@ MTMD_API size_t mtmd_helper_get_n_tokens(const mtmd_input_chunks * chunks);
 // normally, n_pos is equal to n_tokens, but for M-RoPE it is different
 MTMD_API llama_pos mtmd_helper_get_n_pos(const mtmd_input_chunks * chunks);
 
+// helper to get the list of relative positions corresponding to the embedding tokens, to be used by M-RoPE
+// out_pos must have length == mtmd_helper_get_n_tokens(image)
+MTMD_API void mtmd_helper_image_get_decoder_pos(const mtmd_image_tokens * image, mtmd_decoder_pos * out_pos);
+
 // helper function that automatically:
 // 1. run llama_decode() on text chunks
 // 2. run mtmd_encode() on image chunks, then mtmd_get_output_embd() and then llama_decode()
diff --git a/tools/mtmd/mtmd.cpp b/tools/mtmd/mtmd.cpp
index dc2bde194..a56d3b35b 100644
--- a/tools/mtmd/mtmd.cpp
+++ b/tools/mtmd/mtmd.cpp
@@ -1249,6 +1249,14 @@ size_t mtmd_image_tokens_get_ny(const mtmd_image_tokens * image_tokens) {
     return image_tokens->ny;
 }
 
+mtmd_decoder_pos mtmd_image_tokens_get_decoder_pos(const mtmd_image_tokens * image_tokens, size_t i) {
+    mtmd_decoder_pos pos;
+    pos.t = 0;
+    pos.x = i % image_tokens->nx;
+    pos.y = i / image_tokens->nx;
+    return pos;
+}
+
 const char * mtmd_image_tokens_get_id(const mtmd_image_tokens * image_tokens) {
     return image_tokens->id.c_str();
 }
diff --git a/tools/mtmd/mtmd.h b/tools/mtmd/mtmd.h
index 2ecf95694..c91bc0810 100644
--- a/tools/mtmd/mtmd.h
+++ b/tools/mtmd/mtmd.h
@@ -186,12 +186,25 @@ MTMD_API void               mtmd_input_chunk_free(mtmd_input_chunk * chunk);
 // the instance will be constructed via mtmd_tokenize()
 // it will be freed along with mtmd_input_chunk
 MTMD_API size_t       mtmd_image_tokens_get_n_tokens(const mtmd_image_tokens * image_tokens); // TODO: deprecate
-MTMD_API size_t       mtmd_image_tokens_get_nx      (const mtmd_image_tokens * image_tokens);
-MTMD_API size_t       mtmd_image_tokens_get_ny      (const mtmd_image_tokens * image_tokens);
 MTMD_API const char * mtmd_image_tokens_get_id      (const mtmd_image_tokens * image_tokens); // TODO: deprecate
 // number of temporal positions (equals to max(t,h,w) for M-RoPE; equals to n_tokens otherwise)
 MTMD_API llama_pos    mtmd_image_tokens_get_n_pos   (const mtmd_image_tokens * image_tokens); // TODO: deprecate
 
+DEPRECATED(MTMD_API size_t mtmd_image_tokens_get_nx(const mtmd_image_tokens * image_tokens),
+           "use mtmd_image_tokens_get_decoder_pos() instead");
+DEPRECATED(MTMD_API size_t mtmd_image_tokens_get_ny(const mtmd_image_tokens * image_tokens),
+           "use mtmd_image_tokens_get_decoder_pos() instead");
+
+struct mtmd_decoder_pos {
+    uint32_t t;
+    uint32_t x;
+    uint32_t y;
+};
+// get position for decoder attention, to be used by M-RoPE models
+// i is the index of the embedding token, ranging from 0 to mtmd_image_tokens_get_n_tokens() - 1
+// return relative position (for example, embedding 0 will have position (0, 0, 0); remember to adjust it to the current absolute position)
+MTMD_API struct mtmd_decoder_pos mtmd_image_tokens_get_decoder_pos(const mtmd_image_tokens * image_tokens, size_t i);
+
 // tokenize an input text prompt and a list of bitmaps (images/audio)
 // the prompt must have the input image marker (default: "<__media__>") in it
 // the default marker is defined by mtmd_default_marker()