In this paper， a reverse tracing model is stablished according to the viewpoint of reverse Hartmann test to analyze transmission phase measuring deflectometry (TPMD)， and an algorithm which can be used to measure wavefront aberration of single lens or complete lens is proposed. Based on the concept of wavefront aberration， the feasibility of this method is theoretically verified by comparing the optical path difference between the forward and reverse models， and the effectiveness of this method is verified by simulation. The wavefront aberration of the tested element is obtained by the actual ray calibration， system model ray tracing and N-step phase shifting algorithm. In the experiment， the wavefront aberration of a biconvex lens is measured to verify that this method can accurately measure the wavefront aberration. By comparing with the interferometer result， the RMS difference of them is only 0.03 μm. The result shows that this method has the advantages of simple device， low cost and fast measurement， and provides a new off-line or on-line/on-situ testing method for measuring the wavefront aberration of lens without interferometer.