code: def mplfig_to_npimage(fig):
      """Converts a matplotlib figure to a RGB frame after updating the canvas."""
      #  only the Agg backend now supports the tostring_rgb function
      from matplotlib.backends.backend_agg import FigureCanvasAgg
  
      canvas = FigureCanvasAgg(fig)
      canvas.draw()  # update/draw the elements
  
      # get the width and the height to resize the matrix
      l, b, w, h = canvas.figure.bbox.bounds
      w, h = int(w), int(h)
  
      #  exports the canvas to a string buffer and then to a numpy nd.array
      buf = canvas.tostring_rgb()
      image = np.frombuffer(buf, dtype=np.uint8)
      return image.reshape(h, w, 3)
  
label_desc: Use image node_id 1 for calling a global function with example usage: mplfig_to_npimage(fig) and returns: image