It's because mesh expects z-data to be actual coordinates in z, but mesh (and surf) will accept a 4th argument for color
N = 500;
r1=linspace(0,0.005,N);
[X,Y] = meshgrid(r1);
figure; cla; hold on;
ax = gca;
% fig = figure;
% ax = axes(fig,'NextPlot','add');
for i = 1:10
C = rand(N); % replace with the image
Z = ones(N)*i;
% flip the order of Y and Z to get vertical slices
s = surf(ax,X,Z,Y,C,'EdgeColor','none');
end
ax.DataAspectRatio = [1,700,1] % stretch the "z"-axis view
% rotate the view
view([-65,14])
