MATLAB: Combine a number of vectors into a 2D color plot

2d color plotpcolor

I have a number of intensity profiles (saved as vectors) across the diameter of a laser beam, taken at increments along the length of the beam. I would like to generate a color plot similar to the one attached, with the vectors I have being vertical slices of this image. I have managed to get close using plot3 (second image attached) and setting hold on. With this approach the arguments of plot3 are a 1xn X vector of the distance along the diameter (same for each profile), a 1xn uniform Y vector for the increment along the beam (eg [2;2;2;2;2]), and a 1xn Z vector of the intensity. Is there some way to combine all the separate Z intensity vectors to produce an X,Y,intensity color plot, perhaps using pcolor?

Best Answer

Are all the vectors Zn of the same length? Then you can concatenate them into a single matrix with M rows (M is the number of slices/vectors) and N rows (N is the number of points along the slice).
You can create a surf plot an view it from the top, along these lines to:
surf(peaks) 
view([0 90])
xlabel('X') ; ylabel('Y')
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