Add transparency (AlphaData) to frames

Hi,

I have a programm running in which by the end I create and save an image containing values of interest (lifetimes) as CData. The colours are colour-coded using a colormap I provide. For final display, I make the background of the axes black and add alphadata provided from an intensity image that I have (photon count). In this configuration, I have the equivalent of what is known as and Image Intensity Display.

% Create lifetime heatmap

   fig = figure('Name','Heatmap','Units','Normalized');
   ax = axes(fig);
   image(ax,lifetimes);
   colormap(fig,myMap)
   ax.CLim =[minLifetime,maxLifetime];

% Set transparency to account for intensity variations

   ax.Color = 'black';
   set(ax.Children,'AlphaData',intensity);

This works fine but now I would like to do this not only for still images visualised in a figure but for Timelapse/Movies (3D matrices of pix x pix x n where pix is the number of pixels in the image and n the number of images to process). I have been thinking about using implay for such visualisation. I can display the lifetimes as colour-coded values but I have failed so far to achieve the intensity modulation.

I have tried indexing the lifetime values to the colormap and then use the im2frame function to use with implay but my problem then is that I can not use the syntax I know ( set(ax.Children,'AlphaData',intensity); ) to add transparency because as far as I understand, a frame is a structure that has no 'AlphaData' property.

I thus have 2 questions coming to my mind but any comments on the topic would be welcome:

- Is it possible to add AlphaData to frames?

- Is there another way than implay to visualise timelapses that would use images instead of frames?

Thanks in advance for your help!