The rapid and flexible visualization of large amounts of com-
plex data has become a crucial part in medical image analysis. In re-
cent years the Visualization Toolkit (VTK) has evolved as the de-facto
standard for open-source medical data visualization. It features a clean
design based on a data flow paradigm, which the existing wrappers for
VTK (Python, Tcl/Tk, Simulink) closely follow. This allows to elegantly
model many types of algorithms, but presents a steep learning curve for
beginners. In contrast to existing approaches we propose a framework
for accessing VTK’s capabilities from within MATLAB, using a syntax
which closely follows MATLAB’s graphics primitives. While providing
users with the advanced, fast 3D visualization capabilities MATLAB
does not provide, it is easy to learn while being flexible enough to allow
for complex plots, large amounts of data and combinations of visualiza-
tions. The proposed framework will be made available as open source
with detailed documentation and example data sets.