Nearfield acoustic holography (NAH) based on wave superposition approach (WSA) is proposed and applied to radiation analysis of sound sources with arbitrarily shaped surface. In problem of calculating acoustic radiation, boundary element method (BEM) is realized by discretizing acoustic and position variables on the boundary surface, while WSA is accomplished by superposing wave fields generated by simple sources interior to the radiator. Therefore, there are no problems such as parameters interpolation, singular integration etc. in WSAbased acoustic holography, which are inherent to BEMbased NAH. The principle of WSAbased acoustic holography is easier to understand, and it is more amiable to implement on the computer. The results of the experiment show that satisfactory precision has been obtained in the reconstruction of sound field using WSAbasedacoustic holography.