MATLAB: .mat ouput giving error

Question

i am trying to look at the ouput of .mat file so i loaded the ,mat in current folder

a = load('GT_IMG_1.mat');

imshow(a)

but i am getting the following error, can some one help me with this

Error using imageDisplayValidateParams

Expected input number 1, I, to be one of these types:

double, single, uint8, uint16, uint32, uint64, int8, int16, int32, int64, logical

Instead its type was struct

Error in images.internal.imageDisplayParseInputs (line 78)

common_args = images.internal.imageDisplayValidateParams(common_args);

Error in imshow (line 222)

images.internal.imageDisplayParseInputs({'Parent','Border','Reduce'},preparsed_varargin{:});

Answer 1

load() function returns a struct: https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/load.html. The struct has field names, the same as the variable names inside the .mat file. You can see the name of fields

a = load('GT_IMG_1.mat');
fieldnames(a)

and then use imshow on the field containing the image data

imshow(a.ImageVariableName) % ImageVariableName is the name of the field inside a