An interferometer-based technique has been used to determine the change in the refractive index induced by a Q-switched Nd-YAG laser (lambda = 532 nm and pulse duration 6 ns) on an aluminum target under atmospheric air pressure. The average density changes in front of the target irradiated by two laser pulse energy were observed for different focusing conditions. An Abel inversion technique is also presented for calculating three-dimensional density distributions in cylindrical coordinates.