Patent ID: 7102728

Claim:
An evaluation method for evaluating aberration of an imaging optical system, comprising: a first step of setting an aberration polynomial that generally expresses the aberration of said imaging optical system as a function of image plane coordinates and pupil coordinates; a second step of measuring wavefront aberration of said imaging optical system for a plurality of points in an image plane of said imaging optical system; a third step of approximating a specified polynomial as a function of the pupil coordinates to said wavefront aberration obtained in the second step; and a fourth step of determining coefficients of respective terms of said aberration polynomial on the basis of coefficients of respective terms of said specified polynomial obtained in the third step; wherein said aberration polynomial is set so as to include at least one aberration component selected from among a rotational symmetric aberration component with respect to an optical axis of said imaging optical system, a decentering aberration component and an astigmatic aberration component, and wherein the fourth step includes a second approximation step of approximating a second specified polynomial as a function of said image plane coordinates to an image plane distribution of the coefficients of the respective terms in said specified polynomial that is obtained in the third step.