Systems and methods for real time measurement of surface curvature and thermal expansion of small samples

Systems and methods for measuring a curvature radius of a sample. The methods comprise: emitting a light beam from a laser source in a direction towards a beam expander; expanding a size of the light beam emitted from the laser source to create a broad laser beam; reflecting the broad laser beam off of a curved surface of the sample; creating a plurality of non-parallel laser beams by passing the reflected broad laser beam through a grating mask or a biprism; using the plurality of non-parallel laser beams to create an interference pattern at a camera image sensor; capturing a first image by the camera image sensor; and processing the first image by an image processing device to determine the curvature radius of the sample.