Abstract The reliability assessment of electronic packages demands more accurate and efficient method for evaluating heterogeneous packages and their interconnects in various measurement conditions. The digital image correlation (DIC) method has been fully developed in the last decade. With proper improvement, this work demonstrates that DIC method has the ability to fulfill various experimental tasks and obtain the information for interconnect strain analysis, coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) characterization, in-plane displacement and out-of-plane warpage quantification within one measurement. To some extent, it serves as a comprehensive tool for electronic packages' reliability assessment. Given that the DIC technique is new to the electronic packaging area, this work illustrates the principle of optical non-contact experiment method and presents several improvements to fit for the measurement on electronic packaging area. With these applications, it is foreseeable that the DIC method will play an important role in the reliability assessment of electronic packages.