# Zero-Shot Cross-Material Ptychographic Phase Reconstruction Using Deep Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.13969 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.13969/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 12 of its 34 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Sep 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [DeepLab: Semantic Image Segmentation with Deep Convolutional Nets, Atrous Convolution, and Fully Connected CRFs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.00915/) (2016)
- [CBAM: Convolutional Block Attention Module](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.06521/) (2018)
- [Deep Learning Techniques for Inverse Problems in Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.06001/) (2020)
- [Fourier Imager Network (FIN): A deep neural network for hologram reconstruction with superior external generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.10533/) (2022)
- [Deep learning at the edge enables real-time streaming ptychographic imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.09408/) (2022)
- [Physics Constrained Unsupervised Deep Learning for Rapid, High Resolution Scanning Coherent Diffraction Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.11014/) (2023)
- [PtychoFormer: A Transformer-based Model for Ptychographic Phase Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.17377/) (2024)
- [A Physics-Inspired Deep Learning Framework with Polar Coordinate Attention for Ptychographic Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.06806/) (2024)
- [Phase Object Reconstruction for 4D-STEM using Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.12611/) (2022)
- [Wigner Distribution Deconvolution Adaptation for Live Ptychography Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.01309/) (2022)
- [Circular Phase Representation and Geometry-Aware Optimization for Ptychographic Image Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.26664/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Ptychographic phase reconstruction is commonly formulated as an iterative inverse problem, requiring repeated object-probe updates and resulting in substantial computational cost for large-scale 4D-STEM data. We present a direct local-to-global learning framework that reconstructs full-field phase maps from diffraction measurements without iterative refinement during inference. The proposed network predicts local wrapped-phase patches from individual diffraction patterns using a sine-cosine representation, and the predictions are assembled into a full-field reconstruction using calibrated scan positions and Gaussian-weighted stitching. To evaluate generalization beyond the training domain, the model is trained on one material and directly applied to another in a zero-shot setting without target-domain fine-tuning. Experiments on AuPd and MoS2 demonstrate consistent cross-material transfer in both directions, with the proposed method achieving the best full-field MSE, PSNR, and MS-SSIM among the evaluated learning-based methods. Compared with the iterative ePIE approach, the proposed direct local-to-global pipeline reduces end-to-end reconstruction time by approximately 10x, demonstrating its potential for efficient and transferable ptychographic reconstruction.