based on the fundamental principle of phase diversity technique, a prototype space-borne camera was used to experimentally demonstrate the effects of wavefront reversal of phase diversity technique through laboratory and outfield push-broom imaging experiments. experimental results demonstrate that, the accuracy of wavefront reversal based on phase diversity technique is near 1/40λ(λ=632.8 nm)by using the root-mean-squares of residual wave-front errors between the really obtained wave-front through zygo and the calculated wave-front through phase diversity as a criterion. at the same time, by carrying out deconvolution to the degraded push-broom images using the estimated wave-front, the image quality could be prominently improved. the signal-to-noise ratio could be improved at least 40% and the modulation transfer function at nyquist frequency could be improved 80% above, which indirectly proves the effectiveness of phase diversity technique as well. the work reported in this manuscript will pave the way for in-orbit application of phase diversity based wave-front sensing technique in future. © 2017, science press. all right reserved.