Getting values of 3D matrix via their (x,y) coordinates without using loop

It might be trivial. I have a matrix say A which is 3D and consists of two slices ( A(:,:,1) and A(:,:,2)). I want to get a vector containing the values of a slice of this matrix (say the first slice) that correspond to the (x,y) coordinates I have in two row vectors, say: points_x and points_y i.e. I want to get the values:

A(points_x(1), points_y(1), 1), A(points_x(2), points_y(2), 1), ..., A(points_x(end), points_y(end), 1)

but I cannot figure out how to do this. I have tried:

A([points_x; points_y], 1)

but it returned a rectangular matrix not a vector. I don't want to use a for loop for the sake of code performance. Any ideas?

[José-Luis]

If you want a vector, how are you going to distinguish between points?

[Konstantinos]

If the vector contains the values corresponding to the 2D coordinates in order which is:

A(points_x(1), points_y(1), 1), A(points_x(2), points_y(2), 1), ..., A(points_x(end), points_y(end), 1)

I am OK with that and I don't need to distringish them

Answer 1

[José-Luis]

 A = rand(5,5,2);
 x = (1:3);
 y = (2:4);

 your_result = cell2mat(arrayfun(@(x,y) reshape(A(x,y,:),1,[]),x,y,'uniformoutput',false))

[Konstantinos]

Thank you ver much. The odd indices correspond to the 1st slice while the even indices correspond to the 2nd slice.

[José-Luis]

My pleasure.

Answer 2

[KSSV]

why dont you go for interpolation? Interpolation would be the easiest one to get values at your desired points.