The present invention relates to a method of reading out a data carrier comprising a ceramic substrate having first and second opposite surfaces and a thickness of at most 500 µm, wherein the first surface of the substrate comprises a plurality of laser-ablated recesses encoding information, each recess having a depth of at most 1 µm; the method comprising the following steps: illuminating the data carrier with light of a first wavelength, detecting light transmitted through the data carrier and/or reflected by the data carrier, and analyzing the detected light in order to decode the information encoded in the recesses of the data carrier.