Dynamic retinoscopy is a system of retinoscopic examination in which the eyes are made to engage actively, accommodating and converging during the test. It is therefore in a sense the very opposite of ordinary, or static, retinoscopic study, in which the eyes, specifically the neuromuscular mechanism of the eyes, are made to relax as completely as possible, with or without cycloplegia. There are a number of more or less useful applications of dynamic retinoscopic examination. I shall touch briefly on a few.
Dynamic retinoscopic examination can be used to determine whether or not a seeing eye, whatever its degree of vision, has any accommodative power. And, if it has, it will show approximately how much it has. In a general study of accommodative activity it acts as an objective pathfinder and as a check on the subjective methods. A check is desirable, as these methods have some deficiencies. For example,