The evaporation and convective flow pattern of a heated pendant silicone oil droplet have been investigated under the steady-state conditions. Due to the light deflection across a curved interface, a direct velocity recovery method has been developed to recover the distorted vector field of convective flow in the Particle Image Velocimetry analysis. The relation between convection and evaporation is demonstrated in the study. A higher temperature difference at the droplet surface generates a larger convection velocity, indicated in the recovered return flow at the center area of the droplet. Such recovery method can supply a fast solution towards the further quantitative study of the energy transportation of Marangoni flow on droplet evaporation. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.