To address the problem that the lateral wind in atmospheric turbulence is the main factor affecting the laser transmission in the atmospheric channel, a method based on PIV particle image velocimetry is proposed to obtain the lateral wind in the laser transmission path. The theoretical calculation of the moving displacement of the spot image using the PIV particle image velocimetry technique is carried out, and the results show that the method can well reflect the influence mechanism of the lateral wind in the process of measuring the lateral wind, so that the change of the displacement vector can also be reflected while calculating the change of the lateral wind speed.1