DIY Eye Model to Practice Your Retina Exam

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Why Build a Practice Eye?

Slit lamp fundoscopy is a skill that requires repetition. But you can't always have a patient available, and practicing on colleagues gets old quickly. This simple DIY eye model lets you practice as long as you want, whenever you want, at your own slit lamp.

How to Build It

Materials

• A roll of tape (standard packing or masking tape)
• A piece of paper and a pen
• Scissors
• A +20 diopter lens (from your trial lens box — available in every clinic)
• 3 extra strips of tape

Assembly Steps

1. Draw a retina on a piece of paper and cut it out
2. Tape the retina to the back of your roll of tape
3. Set aside three strips of tape
4. Cut a circle from paper and make a hole in the middle — this is your pupil
5. Place the +20D lens on top of the tape roll
6. Place the paper pupil on top of the lens
7. Secure everything with two of your three tape strips

How to Practice

Use the remaining tape strip to attach the model to the headrest of your slit lamp. Then grab your indirect lens (90D, Volk, etc.) and start examining:

• Practice navigating the different quadrants of your drawn retina
• Experiment: what happens when you move the lens vs. the slit lamp?
• Try to see how far into the periphery you can reach
• Try different diopter lenses to compare the views they offer

Level Up: Pocket Retina Cubes

For a more realistic experience, check out Pocket Retina (pocketretina.com). These small cubes come with a built-in lens, pupil, and real retinal images. They offer different pathologies, allowing you to learn and identify subtle differences between conditions. A reference card shows which cube displays which disease.

The video also demonstrates the difference between a 90D lens and a digital wide-field lens — notice how much more of a peripheral retinal tear is visible with the wide-field option.