Towards Real-Time Inference of Thin Liquid Film Thickness Profiles from Interference Patterns Using Vision Transformers

Thin film interferometry is a powerful technique for non-invasively measuring liquid film thickness with applications in ophthalmology, but its clinical translation is hindered by the challenges in reconstructing thickness profiles from interference patterns - an ill-posed inverse problem complicated by phase periodicity, imaging noise and ambient artifacts. Traditional reconstruction methods are either computationally intensive, sensitive to noise, or require manual expert analysis, which is impractical for real-time diagnostics. To address this challenge, here we present a vision transformer-based approach for real-time inference of thin liquid film thickness profiles directly from isolated interferograms. Trained on a hybrid dataset combining physiologically-relevant synthetic and experimental tear film data, our model leverages long-range spatial correlations to resolve phase ambiguities and reconstruct temporally coherent thickness profiles in a single forward pass from dynamic interferograms acquired in vivo and ex vivo. The network demonstrates state-of-the-art performance on noisy, rapidly-evolving films with motion artifacts, overcoming limitations of conventional phase-unwrapping and iterative fitting methods. Our data-driven approach enables automated, consistent thickness reconstruction at real-time speeds on consumer hardware, opening new possibilities for continuous monitoring of pre-lens ocular tear films and non-invasive diagnosis of conditions such as the dry eye disease.