Getting images sort of like live stream

Question

I have an application. I want to make it to somewhat stream my images. The way it works is that i have a thread running that captures data from my port, goes into the pc, does some process and then display an image. I want to keep doing this continuously or depending on how many frames i want. How would i go about implementing something like this.
Using for loops would not work because then the image only display at the end of the loop which is the last frame and misses out on others. Just wondering what method or ways to do it.
Thanks

Answer 1

thanks bobear. here's something i'm facing. i'm using a jbutton to start my stream.
code looks something like:
Runnable updateImage = new Runnable() {
public void run() {
   displayUpdateImage()
for (frameCounter = 0; frameCounter < frameWanted; frameCounter++) {
            SwingUtilities.invokeLater(updateImage);
            System.out.println("Frame number " + frameCounter);
            getData();
        }Basically, getData() will get the information from my port, then there are other functions to convert the data to image. With invoke later, the updated image only displays after the process is done (after for loop is done). Where am i doing wrong here, or is there a better way to do it.
Thanks for your time.