  Experimental advances in condensed matter physics and material science have
enabled ready access to atomic-resolution images, with resolution of modern
tools often sufficient to extract minute details of symmetry-breaking
distortions such as polarization, octahedra tilts, or other structure-coupled
order parameters. The patterns of observed distortions in turn contain the
information on microscopic driving forces defining the development of materials
microstructure and associated thermodynamics. However, the analysis of
underpinning physical models from experimentally observed microscopic degrees
of freedom remains a largely unresolved issue. Here, we explore such an
approach using the paradigmatic Ising model on a square lattice. We show that
the microscopic parameters of the Ising model both for ferromagnetic and
antiferromagnetic case can be extracted from the spin configurations for
temperatures an order of magnitude higher than the phase transition and perform
uncertainty analysis for such reconstructions. This suggests that microscopic
observations of materials with sufficiently high precision can provide
information on generative physics at temperatures well above corresponding
phase transition, opening new horizons for scientific exploration via
high-resolution imaging.
