Abstract
In comparison to classical phase measurement methods like interferometry and holography, there are many phase retrieval methods which are able to recover the phase of a complex valued object without the necessity of a reference wave. Due to the large number of different methods, iterative as well as non-iterative ones, it is hard to find the method which is appropriate for a given application or object. We propose a system which is based on different criteria, some of which can be calculated by analyzing the phase retrieval result compared to the original object. Other criteria like the complexity of the optical system are also taken into account. For testing the benchmark system we use a software which is suitable, first, to simulate the acquisition process of the intensity measurements, second, to run the phase retrieval algorithm itself and, third, to calculate the values of the benchmark criteria. Having determined the values of the different criteria we assign points for every criterion which can be weighted by importance and are summed up for getting an overall benchmark score. This final score can be used to compare different phase retrieval methods and by having a closer look at the single criteria it is possible to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the method. We will show the detailed proceeding of calculating the benchmark value by means of a selected phase retrieval method and a phase only object (USAF target). We have to emphasize that the results strongly depend on the object.
