A method for phase extraction of an electronic speckle pattern interferometry (ESPI) fringe pattern based on two-dimensional (2D) continuous wavelet transform is presented. The phase of the fringe pattern is retrieved by detecting the 2D-wavelet ridges. By using a scanning strategy guided by the fringe frequencies,the problem of sign ambiguity could be avoided. The algorithm can deal with open-fringe patterns as well as closed-fringe patterns and it has a strong ability of speckle noise immunity. Simulation and experimental results show that the phase of the ESPI fringe patterns (open-fringe patterns or closed-fringe patterns) can be extracted successfully.