Refraction at the entrance and exit surfaces results in substantial image astigmatism when used in convergent light.
Thus the Dove prism is used almost exclusively for images appearing at infinity.
Thus, Dove prisms can be used to create beam rotators, which have applications in fields such as interferometry, astronomy, and pattern recognition.
Lesso and Padgett (1999) and Moreno et al. (2003, 2004) found that there is a change in the state of polarization of a beam of light on passing through a rotated dove prism.
The polarization-transforming properties of dove prisms are of particular interest because they can influence the signal measurement of the scientific instrument.