WASP: weighted average of sequential projections for ptychographic phase retrieval

We introduce the weighted average of sequential projections, or WASP, an algorithm for ptychography. Using both simulations and real-world experiments, we test this new approach and compare performance against several alternative algorithms. These tests indicate that WASP effectively combines the benefits of its competitors, with a rapid initial convergence rate, robustness to noise and poor initial conditions, a small memory footprint, easy tuning, and the ability to reach a global minimum when provided with noiseless data. We also show how WASP can be parallelised to split operation across several different computation nodes.