Depth image stream from kinect in matlab with ROS IO package

edit

Figured it out. Might help someone down the line. The /camera/depth/image_raw topic provides data in a 8-bit integer array format of 307234 positions, which can be read with the getData().array() method. It has to be converted to the correct matrix format to be displayed as an image in matlab. Basically, you have to transform a 307234x1 vector into a 640x480 matrix. The code below gets the message array and transforms it to the matrix to be displayed. It was based on the one I used for RGB imaging.

function function2(message) 

width = message.getWidth();
height = message.getHeight();
offset = message.getData().arrayOffset();
index = offset+2:2:width*height*2+offset;

%Get the data in unsigned int8 format
msg = typecast(message.getData().array(), 'uint8');

%Reshape 614469x1 (614469 bytes) into 640x480 (307200 bytes)
img = reshape(msg(index), width, height);

%Flip dimensions
img = flipdim(img, 2);

%Rotate image in 90 degrees
img_rot = imrotate(img, 90);

%Show rotated image
figure(2)
imshow(img_rot);
drawnow;

end

I chose to use the flipdim() and imrotate() methods because I am more familiarized with them. The permute method should have the same result. It's also possible to use imagesc() instead of imshow(), for a different visual result.