How to capture the view in volshow as an image?

I have rendered a volume using volshow in viewer3d (shown below). I would like to save a capture of this view similarly to how I have taken a Windows screenshot below but without needing to use Windows screenshot so that I can automate my code to load in these volumes and output images of the desired view.

Print, saveas, and imsave do not seem to be working for this.

Answer 1

[Matt J]

There are programmatic ways to take a screenshot, e.g.,

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/24323-screencapture-screenshot-of-component-figure-or-screen?s_tid=srchtitle

[Lars Nelson]

Thank you! I'm still interested as to whether or not there's a way to create an image in a figure of the current view so that you could utilize MATLAB's normal image saving options. Is this function the only way you can think of to do this?

[Matt J]

Yes. volshow is not part of the mainstream graphics system. I don't like it any more than you do.

Answer 2

[Matt J]

I'm still interested as to whether or not there's a way to create an image in a figure of the current view so that you could utilize MATLAB's normal image saving options.

This example shows how to do so with getframe:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/images/ref/volshow.html#mw_de6d0c5b-a1d2-4a3b-85a8-9a4c09509492

[Lars Nelson]

I also found a method by opening up a uifigure first and then placing the 3D viewer and volshow in that. That way you can use exportapp to capture an image.

[Edmund Pickering]

I have this working with the following code.

% create viewer
viewer = viewer3d(BackgroundColor="white", GradientColor=[0.5 0.5 0.5],Lighting="on",BackgroundGradient="off");
% volshow
volBone = volshow(stack_(180:400,1:240,1179:1309)>250,'colormap',[214 184 150]/255,Parent=viewer);
% capture frame
frame = getframe(viewer.Parent);

If running in a loop, capturing succesive frames, I've found this helpful

viewer = viewer3d(...)
pause(5) % pause to give viewer time to fully open

for i = 1:...
    viewer.clear % clear previous
    pause(1) % pause to clear
     volshow(...)
    frame = getframe(viewer.Parent);
    writeVideo(v,frame)
    
end