A method for measuring pitch, yaw and roll angles of an element, said method comprising: providing a frequency tunable laser beam; directing the laser beam into a spiral phase plate resonator, SPPR, device, said SPPR device including opposing reflective surfaces (30, 32) that reflect the laser beam back and forth in the device, wherein one of the reflective surfaces includes a spiral step index that causes multiple reflected amplitudes having different phases to be combined and generate an optical vortex intensity pattern defined by the phases of the multiple amplitudes, where the intensity pattern includes a singularity centroid and four radial light peaks; reflecting the laser beam off of the element after it has propagated through the SPPR device so that the laser beam is directed onto a camera (54, 70) that generates images of the optical vortex intensity pattern; determining a location of the centroid in the images generated by the camera (54, 70); determining integrated counts along a radial direction from the centroid in the images generated by the camera (54, 70) as a function of beam roll angle; determining a location of the radial light peaks in the images generated by the camera (54, 70) using the integrated counts; changing the frequency of the laser beam to rotate the radial light peaks in the optical vortex intensity pattern in the images generated by the camera (54, 70); estimating the roll angle of the element from the change in frequency that rotated the optical vortex intensity pattern; determining the pitch angle of the element by a shift of the vortex intensity pattern in one plane in the images generated by the camera (54, 70); and determining the yaw angle of the element by a shift of the vortex intensity pattern in a plane orthogonal to the one plane in the images generated by the camera (54, 70). providing a frequency tunable laser beam; directing the laser beam into a spiral phase plate resonator, SPPR, device, said SPPR device including opposing reflective surfaces (30, 32) that reflect the laser beam back and forth in the device, wherein one of the reflective surfaces includes a spiral step index that causes multiple reflected amplitudes having different phases to be combined and generate an optical vortex intensity pattern defined by the phases of the multiple amplitudes, where the intensity pattern includes a singularity centroid and four radial light peaks; reflecting the laser beam off of the element after it has propagated through the SPPR device so that the laser beam is directed onto a camera (54, 70) that generates images of the optical vortex intensity pattern; determining a location of the centroid in the images generated by the camera (54, 70); determining integrated counts along a radial direction from the centroid in the images generated by the camera (54, 70) as a function of beam roll angle; determining a location of the radial light peaks in the images generated by the camera (54, 70) using the integrated counts; changing the frequency of the laser beam to rotate the radial light peaks in the optical vortex intensity pattern in the images generated by the camera (54, 70); estimating the roll angle of the element from the change in frequency that rotated the optical vortex intensity pattern; determining the pitch angle of the element by a shift of the vortex intensity pattern in one plane in the images generated by the camera (54, 70); and determining the yaw angle of the element by a shift of the vortex intensity pattern in a plane orthogonal to the one plane in the images generated by the camera (54, 70).