We herein report a method for the imaging of different inclusion abilities of alpha-cyclodextrin (alpha-CD) and beta-cyclodextrin (beta-CD) toward cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) using liquid crystals (LCs). The optical transition from the dark to the bright state was caused by the inclusion interaction between CTAB and CDs. It was confirmed that alpha-CD formed more stable CTAB complexes than beta-CD, leading to different optical responses of the LCs from the alpha-CDICTAB and beta-CDICTAB systems. This method could be used to provide a visual method for selection of the correct CD molecules for interaction with surfactant molecules in recognition systems. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.