Pulse wave measurement of carotid artery is the foundation of the prophylaxis and treatment of cardiovascular diseases. Three dimensional digital image correlation system is applied to measuring the human carotid artery based on the water transfer printing (WTP) technique, which can transfer optimized digital speckle patterns for different skin colors. Compared with natural textures of the skin, digital speckle patterns fabricated from the WTP technique are proved to be more stable, accurate and efficient. Experiments are performed to demonstrate the validity of the proposed method. Various information of the pulse wave such as shapes, frequencies and deformations in both time domain and spatial domain can be extracted from the full-field of carotid arterial surface. The research may be beneficial to cardiovascular disease monitoring.