This invention provides a system and method to determine orientation/pose of a contact lens residing on the transparent bottom of a fluid-filled, typically opaque-sided cuvette. This allows the system to determine whether the subject contact lens is in a concave up or concave down orientation, and whether the lens is everted. An illuminator is aligned on a longitudinal axis of the cuvette through the contact lens at a position over the cuvette, and a vision system camera is aligned beneath the bottom of the cuvette on the axis. In alternate embodiments the axial locations of the camera and the illuminator can be varied. The camera acquires images of the contact lens. The vision system associated finds the appropriate contact lens edges and characteristics of features. These features allow each of the four poses to be distinguished and categorized for either an acceptable/good or unacceptable/bad pose within the cuvette.