In order to use the cheiroscope, the patient looks through the lense and sees the image visible to his/her eyes. For a right handed person, his/her left eye will face the mirror, while the right eye will face the flat surface of the cheiroscope. A practice image is placed on the left side of cheiroscope (adjacent to the mirror), while a plain piece of paper is kept on the right side. The patient traces the image that s/he sees through the left eye on the paper facing the right eye.

Patients suffering from lack of binocular vision (due to various ailments like squint or lazy eye) will find it difficult to complete this exercise because their brain cannot fuse the image from both the eyes. In cheiroscope, the eye facing the mirror sees a virtual image (object reflected by the mirror), while the other eye sees a real image (paper). By separating the image that the left and the right eye sees, the brain will be forced to fuse the image from both the eyes.

If the patient continues to use Cheiroscope as prescribed by the physician, s/he will be able to develop binocular vision. This will enable him/her to develop a better depth perception.