Based on what @J. Calleja said, you have two choices

Method 1 - Random access

If you want to random access the element of Mat, just simply use

Mat.at<data_Type>(row_num, col_num) = value;

Method 2 - Continuous access

If you want to continuous access, OpenCV provides Mat iterator compatible with STL iterator and it's more C++ style

MatIterator_<double> it, end;
for( it = I.begin<double>(), end = I.end<double>(); it != end; ++it)
{
    //do something here
}

or

for(int row = 0; row < mat.rows; ++row) {
    float* p = mat.ptr(row); //pointer p points to the first place of each row
    for(int col = 0; col < mat.cols; ++col) {
         *p++;  // operation here
    }
}

If you have any difficulty to understand how Method 2 works, I borrow the picture from a blog post in the article Dynamic Two-dimensioned Arrays in C, which is much more intuitive and comprehensible.

See the picture below.

For cv::Mat_<T> mat just use mat(row, col)

Accessing elements of a matrix with specified type cv::Mat_< _Tp > is more comfortable, as you can skip the template specification. This is pointed out in the documentation as well.

code:

cv::Mat1d mat0 = cv::Mat1d::zeros(3, 4);
std::cout << "mat0:\n" << mat0 << std::endl;
std::cout << "element: " << mat0(2, 0) << std::endl;
std::cout << std::endl;

cv::Mat1d mat1 = (cv::Mat1d(3, 4) <<
    1, NAN, 10.5, NAN,
    NAN, -99, .5, NAN,
    -70, NAN, -2, NAN);
std::cout << "mat1:\n" << mat1 << std::endl;
std::cout << "element: " << mat1(0, 2) << std::endl;
std::cout << std::endl;

cv::Mat mat2 = cv::Mat(3, 4, CV_32F, 0.0);
std::cout << "mat2:\n" << mat2 << std::endl;
std::cout << "element: " << mat2.at<float>(2, 0) << std::endl;
std::cout << std::endl;

output:

mat0:
[0, 0, 0, 0;
 0, 0, 0, 0;
 0, 0, 0, 0]
element: 0

mat1:
[1, nan, 10.5, nan;
 nan, -99, 0.5, nan;
 -70, nan, -2, nan]
element: 10.5

mat2:
[0, 0, 0, 0;
 0, 0, 0, 0;
 0, 0, 0, 0]
element: 0