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Eye care professionals use prism correction as a component of some eyeglass prescriptions. A lens which includes some amount of prism correction will displace the viewed image horizontally, vertically, or a combination of both directions.
An optical prism is a transparent optical element with flat, polished surfaces that are designed to refract light. At least one surface must be angled — elements with two parallel surfaces are not prisms. The most familiar type of optical prism is the triangular prism, which has a triangular base and rectangular sides.
Such a lens can be regarded as an array of prisms arranged in a circular fashion with steeper prisms on the edges and a flat or slightly convex center. In the first (and largest) Fresnel lenses, each section was actually a separate prism.
Lenses are made from materials such as glass or plastic and are ground, polished, or molded to the required shape. A lens can focus light to form an image, unlike a prism, which refracts light without focusing.
Roof prism designs allow a simpler exterior, and are now common but they are more expensive to produce. Complicating production requirements make high-quality roof prism design binoculars relatively costly to produce compared to in optical quality equivalent Porro prism binoculars.
A relatively new type of telescopic sight, called prismatic telescopic sight, prismatic sight or "prism scope", replaces the image-erecting relay lenses of a traditional telescope with a roof prism design commonly found in compact binoculars, monoculars and spotting scopes.