Image Analysis Toolbox: Have you ever wondered how an animal sees? What are the images we see around us like through the eyes of an animal? If that's what you're interested in, you can find out using your camera and your computer.
Scientists from the University of Exeter have developed a Multispectral Image Calibration and Analysis Toolbox (or simply Image Analysis Toolbox), which will allow you to see the colors that animals see in your photos. 
The program is distributed free of charge by the university, so if you are interested, you can download it.
To use it, you need to select the animal from a large list. Based on your selection, the software will provide you with advice on how to set up your camera.
Once you have the photos, you can upload them to your computer and the program will run the automatic calibration, which separates the colors into different layers.
Finally, it will give you a photo with the colors that the animal you selected sees.
This means that if you choose a non-primate mammal, for example, the red spectrum will be absent – humans and Old World monkeys are the only mammals capable of seeing blue, yellow and red, i.e. all the primary colours.
If the animal you chose was a bird, reptile, amphibian, or insect, however, the colors may be based on a combination of four or more primary colors. 
They may also include colors from the ultraviolet spectrum, which we cannot see without special full-spectrum cameras.
If all this seems too complicated to you, it's simple for researchers, because they've already used the app in some very innovative ideas. For example, the software has already been used to track a woman's facial color during her ovulation cycle (revealing colors that the human eye can't see), to study color change in crabs, and to understand how birds use camouflage to protect their eggs.
The Multispectral Image Calibration and Analysis Toolbox or Image Analysis Toolbox was developed by Dr. Jolyon Troscianko's team. It is available for download from the links below
Download Multispectral Image Calibration and Analysis Toolbox
- micaToolbox version 1.1 Windows
- micaToolbox version 1.1 Linux
- micaToolbox version 1.1 Mac (note you might need to recompile DCRAW for macs, see the user guide).
- User Guide version 1.0
- Paper (pre-proof)
