The interaction between light and solid matter causes localized heating and surface displacement in the nanometer scale. The deformed surface can be analyzed by probing the time-dependent intensity of a laser reflected off of the surface using the thermal mirror (TM) method. This method provides quantitative measurements of thermal, optical and mechanical properties of a variety of materials. Here, we propose an alternative method to measure laser-induced surface deformation using atomic force microscopy (AFM). AFM is employed to determine the time evolution of the surface deformation and a theoretical model is proposed to determine physical properties of semi-transparent materials. The results are found to be in excellent agreement compared to those obtained using TM.