This article should not be considered as a full review of current methods for non-destructive testing of surface layers. Rather, it is a subjective in this area. However, the article provides some review of the challenges posed by the current state of surface layers treatment techniques on the area of Non-Destructive materials evaluation: enhancement of the sensitivity to the type of defects, increasing resolution to submicron values, the requirement to diagnose the surface layers with depth resolution of properties, diagnosis of multilayer multicomponent surface layers and coatings, treated with concentrated energy.