We have developed several analytic and experimental techniques to measure the divergence and emittance of charged particle beams, which employ optical transition radiation (OTR) produced from thin intercepting foils. OTR’s directionality, promptness, linearity, polarization, and the sensitivity of its angular distribution to energy and divergence, can be all exploited to diagnose the spatial distribution, energy, and emittance of a charged particle beam. We describe the techniques we have developed to separately determine thexandyemittances of a beam at anxorywaist using OTR from a single foil or a two foil OTR interferometer. These methods have proven to be especially valuable for diagnosing low emittance electron beams produced by FEL accelerators, which range in energy from 17 to 110 Mev. However, we have shown that there is no inherent theoretical limit to the utility of these methods for much higher energy lepton or hadron beams. The advantages of OTR methods over those commonly used to diagnose beam properties are described.