A wavefront measurement system includes a source of electromagnetic
radiation. An illumination system delivers the electromagnetic radiation
to an object plane. A source of a diffraction pattern is in the object
plane. A projection optical system projects the diffraction pattern onto
an image plane, which includes a mechanism (e.g., a shearing grating) to
introduce the lateral shear. A detector is located optically conjugate
with the pupil of the projection optical system, and receives an instant
fringe pattern, resulting from the interference between sheared
wavefronts, from the image plane. The diffraction pattern is dynamically
scanned across a pupil of the projection optical system, and the
resulting time-integrated interferogram obtained from the detector is
used to measure the wavefront aberration across the entire pupil.