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Ophthalmic diagnostic instruments designed for examining the eye (mostly the anterior part of the eye) using an illumination system combined with a binocular microscope. The instruments usually consist of illumination sources with a mechanism that provides a slit beam of light into the eye with different types of illumination (e.g., direct or indirect, focal or diffuse, background illumination), a binocular microscope for viewing the magnified slit image, and a control component for adjusting the focus of the microscope and the slit (e.g., slit rotation, slit width); some also have refraction mirrors to direct light to a camera mounted above the microscope. Slit lamps provide a magnified view of eye structures (e.g., eyelid, sclera, iris, crystalline lens, cornea); some instruments can also examine the retina using specific lenses. Slit lamps are used mainly in the diagnosis of eye conditions.
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