title: How to define and use opencv mat of user type
body: <p>My question is similiar to the one <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7760149/a-cvmat-of-stdvector-how-do-i">a cv::Mat of std::vector ... how do I?</a>  </p>
  
  <p>I need a matrix where each element is a std::vector.  This matrix is the output of calculations done on a series of images of the same size (like a video ). Many of the calculations are typical cv functions (convert to gray scale, box filter etc. ) and the value of the pixel is then added to the vector. I do not know before hand how many images I will have and in any case, I cannot use the channel concept as images may be more than 512.</p>
  
  <p>One of the suggested answers there was to use a Mat of pointers.  So if I try the following, will it work?</p>
  
  <p>This will be on Windows machines and I understand that the pointer size INT-PTR 64 bits wide. I could then use CV_64 but only CV_64F is defined.  Since I will not be doing any calculations with this matrix, can I use this to store the pointers. I am thinking that before I read the first image, I will get the size, create this matrix, use "new std::vector" to create the vector for each pixel and store that pointer in the element.  In the loop for my calculations I use the same access offset for to read the original images and to store the output in the vector.   When I am done with the vectors, I need to delete these before I release the cv::mat.</p>
  
  <p>I appreciate any input from those who know more about opencv than I do - this is really from the first application with opencv.</p>