Background: The purpose of this project is to apply and optimize a conventional streak retinoscope connected to a smartphone in order to demonstrate and record retinoscopic techniques, related phenomena, typical examination errors in a standardized environment and to use this set-up to produce instructional video clips. The videos enhance and improve the trainer-trainee interaction by instantly visualizing the optical phenomena on the integrated monitor of the retinoscope.
Methods: A smartphone (iPhone 6, Apple, Cupertino, CA, USA) is reversibly connected to a Beta 200 streak retinoscope (HEINE, Herrsching, Germany) via a coupling plate. This allows visualization of the optical phenomena on the screen of a smartphone, which can also be used for recording. To stabilize the recording conditions, the battery handle of the retinoscope is connected to a 3-axis gimbal (Zhiyun Crane Plus, Zhiyun, Guilin, China). In this way the examination unit can be rotated around all axes without any relevant changes in distance. A software-based post-processing (Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2017, Adobe Systems Software Ireland Limited, Dublin. Ireland) of the video sequences almost completely eliminates motion artefacts.
Results: With the aforementioned experimental set-up, the following optical phenomena have so far been documented as videos, which are available online: flashing point, with-movement and against-movement, scissors phenomenon, cataract, astigmatic ametropia and refraction scotoma.
Conclusion: For the first time smartphone video retinoscopy allows optical phenomena to be presented to the examiner (trainee) and trainer at the same time and to produce realistic instructional videos of high quality with comparatively little effort.
Keywords: Educational video; Examination monitor; Optical phenomena; Teaching; Trainer-trainee interaction.