Abstract: The invention is directed to a method for testing optical components and tests can be made on aspherical surfaces or, more specifically, on aspherical wavefronts. For this purpose, the collimator of an interferometer which generates the test wave is displaced relative to the test component and interferograms are electronically registered by means of an image sensor in different positions of the collimator and are stored as light path length differences between the test beam and the comparison beam for the individual image points of each interferogram. The relative position between the collimator and the test component is additionally measured with high precision. Thereafter, the light path length differences which were measured interferometrically are compared with desired light path length differences computed for the different positions of the collimator or determined by calibration. From this comparison, the aspheric form of the wavefront of the test component is computed.