Value of handles.axes in MATLAB GUI

What value will get stored in handles.axes if image is present and if the image is not present? I want check the condition whether image is present or not, and i implemented this

    if handles.axes1==0
    msgbox('Please insert image. . .', 'Error. . .');
    end

but this is not working, please suggest me the best way of doing this.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

You could try

if ~ishandle(handles.axes1)

However, if the axes exists but does not contain an image, the axes will still be a handle. But you can test

if isempty(findobj(handles.axes1, 'type', 'image'))

to see whether the axes contains an image

[Chethan]

Thank you and it is working, but what does 'type' indicates in above code?