diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index ad9bb9e..26c7e32 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -26,7 +26,6 @@ clip = CLIP(
     text_enc_depth = 6,
     text_seq_len = 256,
     text_heads = 8,
-    num_visual_tokens = 512,
     visual_enc_depth = 6,
     visual_image_size = 256,
     visual_patch_size = 32,
@@ -60,6 +59,52 @@ loss = clip(
 loss.backward()
 ```
 
+You can also pass in an external visual transformer / residual net. You simply have to make sure your image encoder returns a set of embeddings in the shape of `batch x seq x dim`, and make sure `dim_image` is properly specified as the dimension of the returned embeddings. Below is an example using vision transformer from `vit_pytorch`
+
+```bash
+$ pip install vit_pytorch>=0.25.6
+```
+
+```python
+import torch
+from x_clip import CLIP
+
+from vit_pytorch import ViT
+from vit_pytorch.extractor import Extractor
+
+base_vit = ViT(
+    image_size = 256,
+    patch_size = 32,
+    num_classes = 1000,
+    dim = 512,
+    depth = 6,
+    heads = 16,
+    mlp_dim = 2048,
+    dropout = 0.1,
+    emb_dropout = 0.1
+)
+
+vit = Extractor(base_vit, return_embeddings_only = True)
+
+clip = CLIP(
+    image_encoder = vit,
+    dim_image = 512,           # must be set as the same dimensions as the vision transformer above
+    dim_text = 512,
+    dim_latent = 512,
+    num_text_tokens = 10000,
+    text_enc_depth = 6,
+    text_seq_len = 256,
+    text_heads = 8
+)
+
+text = torch.randint(0, 10000, (4, 256))
+images = torch.randn(4, 3, 256, 256)
+mask = torch.ones_like(text).bool()
+
+loss = clip(text, images, text_mask = mask, return_loss = True)
+loss.backward()
+```
+
 ## Citations
 
 ```bibtex
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 150469f..524d6be 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@
 setup(
   name = 'x-clip',
   packages = find_packages(exclude=[]),
-  version = '0.0.9',
+  version = '0.0.10',
   license='MIT',
   description = 'X-CLIP',
   author = 'Phil Wang',
diff --git a/x_clip/x_clip.py b/x_clip/x_clip.py
index c3774b8..4fd3592 100644
--- a/x_clip/x_clip.py
+++ b/x_clip/x_clip.py
@@ -211,6 +211,7 @@ class CLIP(nn.Module):
     def __init__(
         self,
         *,
+        image_encoder = None,
         dim_text = 512,
         dim_image = 512,
         dim_latent = 512,
@@ -218,7 +219,6 @@ def __init__(
         text_enc_depth = 6,
         text_seq_len = 256,
         text_heads = 8,
-        num_visual_tokens = 512,
         visual_enc_depth = 6,
         visual_heads = 8,
         visual_image_size = 256,
@@ -237,6 +237,9 @@ def __init__(
         image_ssl_loss_weight = 0.05
     ):
         super().__init__()
+
+        # instantiate text transformer
+
         self.text_transformer = TextTransformer(
             dim = dim_text,
             num_tokens = num_text_tokens + (1 if use_mlm else 0),
@@ -245,14 +248,19 @@ def __init__(
             heads = text_heads
         )
 
-        self.visual_transformer = VisionTransformer(
-            dim = dim_image,
-            image_size = visual_image_size,
-            patch_size = visual_patch_size,
-            channels = channels,
-            depth = visual_enc_depth,
-            heads = visual_heads
-        )
+        # instantiate image transformer
+
+        if exists(image_encoder):
+            self.visual_transformer = image_encoder
+        else:
+            self.visual_transformer = VisionTransformer(
+                dim = dim_image,
+                image_size = visual_image_size,
+                patch_size = visual_patch_size,
+                channels = channels,
+                depth = visual_enc_depth,
+                heads = visual_heads
+            )
 
         # text ssl