A novel method for measuring local stress distributions and birefringence of films on substrates and planar optical waveguides, with submicrometric resolution, is presented. The technique relies on a reflective tomographic configuration, applied in conjunction with a polarimetric setup, which processes the stress-induced change of the state of polarization of a laser probe beam reflected at the waveguide–substrate (film–substrate) interface. By this means, theoretically foreseen stress behavior can be experimentally verified and spurious or induced local stress variations in integrated optics components can also be brought into evidence. The feasibility of the proposed method has been verified by reconstructing the two-dimensional axial stress distribution in the 4x2 micron(2) core region of a doped silica-on-silicon optical waveguide.