Correct way to read depth images

edit

Thank you. Well, i was reading them using a cv::Mat object of type CV_16UC1. I'd like to know if some scaling operation is needed (considering that these are indeed kinect depth images) and that most opencv functions work with CV_8U matrixes.

I would just look at the data and see what min and max values you find there. For display, you probably want to scale or normalize them before converting to 8 bit.