This paper gives a method of quantifying small visual differences between 3D mesh models with conforming topology, based on the theory of strain fields. Strain field is a geometric quantity in elasticity which is used to describe the deformation of elastomer. In this paper we consider the 3D models as objects with elasticity. The further demonstrations are provided: the first is intended to give the reader a visual impression of how our measure works in practice; and the second is to give readers a visual impression of how our measure works in evaluating filter algorithms. Our experiments show that our difference estimates are well correlated with human perception of differences. This work has applications in the evaluation of 3D mesh watermarking, 3D mesh compression reconstruction, and 3D mesh filtering.