The paper reports on a pressure measurement of underwater shock waves generated by collapse of a vapor bubble using the background-oriented schlieren (BOS) technique. In the BOS system, the vapor bubble is induced by an underwater electric discharge. To estimate background-element displacement induced by the underwater shock wave, a spatiotemporal derivative (STD) algorithm is applied in image processing. Furthermore, the accuracy of the STD algorithm is evaluated using the images obtained with our BOS system relative to the cross-correlation method. Subsequently, the pressure distributions are obtained by solving the Poisson equation and applying a filtered-back projection algorithm. An experiment to visualize the behaviors of the underwater shock waves is also carried out using the shadowgraph method. As a result, the pressure waveforms estimated by the BOS technique keep consistent with that in experimental profiles. The pressure attenuations behind the underwater shock wave are also in good agreements with the experimental measurements. It is expected that the BOS technique will probably overcome the problems associated with the conventional method of pressure measurement related to the collapse of microbubbles, and becomes a promising means of quantitatively measuring high-speed phenomena.