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A novel zonal method is proposed for exact discrete reconstruction of a two-dimensional wavefront with high spatial resolution for lateral shearing interferometry. Four difference wavefronts measured in the x and y shear directions are required. Each of the two shear directions is measured twice with different shear amounts. The shear amounts of the second measurements of the x and y directions are S x +1 pixels and S y +1 pixels, where S x pixels and S y pixels are the shear amounts of the first measurements in the x and y directions, respectively. The shear amount in each direction can be chosen freely, provided that it is below a maximum value determined by the pupil shape and the number of samples N in that direction; thus, the choices are not limited by the more stringent condition required by previous methods, namely, that the shear amounts must be divisors of N . This method can exactly reconstruct any wavefront at evaluation points up to an arbitrary constant if the data is noiseless, and high spatial resolution can be achieved even with large shear amounts. The method is applicable not only to square pupils, but also to general pupil shapes if a sufficient number of Gerchberg iterations are employed. In this study, the validity and capability of the method were confirmed by numerical experiments. In addition, the experiments demonstrated that the method is stable with respect to noise in the difference wavefronts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]