In the process of the reconstruction of digital holography, the traditional methods of diffraction and filtration are commonly adopted to recover the original complex-wave signal. Influenced by twin-image and zero-order terms, the above-mentioned methods, however, either limit the field of vision or result in the loss of the amplitude and phase. A new method for complex-wave retrieval is presented, which is based on blind signal separation. Three frames of holograms are captured by a charge coupled device (CCD) camera to form an observation signal. The term containing only amplitude and phase of complex-wave is separated, by means of independent component analysis, from the observation signal, which effectively eliminates the zero-order term. Finally, the complex-wave retrieval of pure phase wavefront is achieved. Experimental results show that this method can better recover the amplitude and phase of the original complex-wave even when there is a frequency spectrum mixture in the hologram. In the process of the reconstruction of digital holography, the traditional methods of diffraction and filtration are commonly adopted to recover the original complex-wave signal. The above-mentioned methods, however, either limit the field of vision or result in the loss of the amplitude and phase. A new method for complex-wave retrieval is presented, which is based on blind signal separation. Three frames of holograms are captured by a charge coupled device (CCD) camera to form an observation signal. The term containing only amplitude and phase of complex-wave is separated, by means of independent component analysis, from the observation signal, which effectively eliminates the zero-order term. Finally, the complex-wave retrieval of pure phase waveforms is achieved. Experimental results show that this method can better recover the amplitude and phase of the original complex-wave even when there is a frequency spectrum mixture in the holo gram