variable or struct index creation

I am working with a huge set of image stacks. Instead of importing 100 images 1 by 1, I want to do this programmatically. I would like to either:

1) create a variable with the image name i.e. traces01, traces 02, ... traces 99. similiar to the command below

traces01 = imread('traces01.tif');

2) bring all images into a struct similiar to below

images.traces01 = imread('traces01.tif');

I have successfully created a ImportName variable with all 100 image names through the sprintf command using a for loop. I just cannot figure out how to now move to using a for loop to accomplish

images.ImportName(i) = imread(ImportName(i));

thanks for anyone's help.

Answer 1

[Voss]

If ImportName is a cell array of character vectors, like this:

ImportName = sprintfc("traces%02d",1:5)

ImportName = 1×5 cell array
    {'traces01'}    {'traces02'}    {'traces03'}    {'traces04'}    {'traces05'}

Then building that images struct might look like this:

for ii = 1:numel(ImportName)
    images.(ImportName{ii}) = imread([ImportName{ii} '.tif']);
end

Or if ImportName is a string array, like this:

ImportName = string(sprintfc('traces%02d',1:5))

ImportName = 1×5 string array
    "traces01"    "traces02"    "traces03"    "traces04"    "traces05"

Then building the images struct might look like this:

for ii = 1:numel(ImportName)
    images.(ImportName(ii)) = imread([ImportName(ii) + ".tif"]);
end

However, it may be more convenient for your purpose (I don't know) to build a struct array, each element of which contains the name of an image file ...

(if ImportName is a cell array of character vectors:)

images = struct('file_name',ImportName); % struct array

(if ImportName is a string array:)

images = struct('file_name',cellstr(ImportName)); % struct array

... and the image data ...

for ii = 1:numel(images)
    images(ii).image_data = imread(images(ii).file_name);
end

... and any other information you want to associate with each image/image file.