Q. What is an Auto-refractor?
A: Auto-refractors are machines that automatically determine the correct lens prescription for your eyes.

If you’ve discovered you might need vision correction during your eye examination, it’s vital to determine just how “much” your eyes need to be corrected. This is called measuring your “refraction.”

Auto-refractors automatically measure this value during an eye examination.

While seated with your chin in a stabilizing chinrest, you’ll be asked to focus on an image or point of light. The autorefractor automatically determines the correction needed to place your “focus point” on top of the retina, the light-sensitive area at the back of the eye responsible for correctly processing images.

The measurement taken by an auto-refractor can be translated into a prescription for eyeglasses.

In eye exams for small children, or for people with special needs who may have trouble sitting calmly during an extended exam, or verbally describing their vision problems, auto-refractors give highly accurate measurements used to determine vision correction needs, automatically. Subjective responses are not needed as would be with a manual refraction by an eye doctor or ophthalmic technician.

How do auto-refractors work?

Auto-refractors only take a few moments to determine each measurement for each eye. What’s more, auto-refractors are quite reliable and are sometimes used in conjunction with a machine called a phoropter to manually switch lenses in front of your eyes to refine the refraction with subjective data, thereby helping to help determine the ideal vision correction.