Cylindrical lenses are used to correct astigmatism in the eye and in rangefinders, to produce astigmatism, tretching a point of light into a line, they are widely used in bar code scanning, projection optics systems, laser measurement systems and holography.

 Cylindrical lenses are available in either plano-concave or plano-convex configurations from Core Optronics, Plano-concave lenses have a negative focal length and are used for image reduction or to spread light Plano-convex lenses have a positive focal length, which makes them ideal for collecting and focusing light for many imaging applications.