[Objective] The existence of dead-time in the operation of a three-phase inverter results in the generation of high-order harmonics in both the output voltage and output current. Specifically, when switching devices with a relatively high switching frequency are employed, severe switching oscillation will be induced. To address the problem of complex calculation associated with traditional dead-time compensation methods, this paper proposes an improved dead-time compensation method of inverters based on direct voltage calculation, which significantly simplifies the calculation process of the traditional approaches. [Methods] Firstly, the influence mechanism of dead-time in voltage space vector modulation on the phase voltage and phase current of the motor was analyzed. Then, a dead-time compensation method based on the polarity determination of the phase current at the voltage neutral point was proposed. This method compensated the voltage by calculating the voltage vector conduction time in segments according to the different polarities of the phase current at the voltage midpoint, which reduced the computational complexity of the traditional dead-time compensation methods. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method was verified through simulations and experiments. [Results] The simulation results showed that before and after the implementation of the compensation method, the total harmonic distortion (THD) of the phase A output current was reduced from 7.29% to 3.45%. Experimental results demonstrated that with the proposed dead-time compensation strategy applied, the phase current THD was below 4%, whereas the THD exceeded 6% without dead-time compensation. [Conclusion] The strategy proposed in this paper can effectively mitigate the impacts caused by the dead-time effect and improve the waveform quality of the output voltage and output current.