IplImage vs CvMat

Question

I know many people are interested in the technical difference between IplImage and CvMat. (Yes, NOT cv::Mat(*), but CvMat.) So, let's clear the differences with a practical focus.

Is CvMat the refcounted version of IplImage? Is CvMat only a wrapper around IplImage? If so, why did they also develop CvMat?

I asked these questions because I saw IplImage being far and away the most popular at the overall searches and in my opinion it also has the most posts.

What is the benefit of still using IplImage instead of newer structures?

(*)(I have put also c++ tag here as many people are using it also with c++, and also some libraries prefer IplImage.)

Answer 1

I recommend you to read paragraph OpenCV Primitive Data Types from the book Learning OpenCV. There's a big and good explanation about difference between these two datatypes.