ABSTRACT
The wavefront deformations can be represented by many types of two-dimensional analytical functions, but the most commonly used are the Zernike polynomials. A mistake in just one of the fringes can lead to significant errors when calculating the wavefront deformation. Skeletonizing techniques detect the fringe peaks on the entire area of the digitized interferogram. The assignment of order numbers to the fringes is an extremely important step. When the values of the wavefront deformations have been determined for many points over the interferogram, an interpolation between the points must be made in order to estimate the complete wavefront shape. The reference spherical wavefront may be defined with any value of the radius of curvature without modifying the position of the center of curvature. Before sampling the fringes it is useful to add a tilt to the interferogram.
