Feature Request: Support table image output in Markdown export

[ryyhan]

Feature Request: Support table image output in Markdown export

Description

When exporting a document to Markdown using docling, TableItem elements are currently only exported as text-based Markdown tables (or HTML). Even when image_mode is set to ImageRefMode.REFERENCED or ImageRefMode.EMBEDDED and generate_table_images=True is used, the table images are not included in the Markdown output.

This contrasts with PictureItem elements, which correctly respect the image_mode setting and output image links.

This issue was originally reported in docling (docling-project/docling#2820), but the root cause and fix lie within docling-core's serialization logic.

Current Behavior

• MarkdownTableSerializer (in docling_core) strictly exports tables as text/markdown grids.
• It ignores the image_mode parameter for tables.
• It ignores the presence of item.image (if populated).

Expected Behavior

If image_mode is set to REFERENCED or EMBEDDED, and the TableItem has an associated image (item.image), the serializer should:

1. Preferentially output the image (or include it alongside the text, depending on desired behavior, but likely behaving similar to PictureItem).
2. Generate the appropriate Markdown image syntax (e.g., ![Table](image_path.png) or embedded base64).

Proposed Solution

Modify MarkdownTableItemSerializer (or MarkdownTableSerializer) in docling_core/transforms/serializer/markdown.py.

The serialize method should be updated to check self.params.image_mode:

# Pseudo-code logic to be added to serialize()

if self.params.image_mode in [ImageRefMode.REFERENCED, ImageRefMode.EMBEDDED] and item.image:
    # Logic similar to MarkdownPictureSerializer
    image_link = self._get_image_link(item) # Helper to generate path/base64
    return getattr(self, "create_ser_result")(text=f"![{label}]({image_link})", span_source=item)

# Fallback to existing text table generation
...

[romitsenmi]

Hi, just wanted to know if there's any update on this? Thanks a lot!

[romitsenmi]

@erikvullings Thanks a lot for sharing the code, I will try this out. My initial issue arose from having a rotated table in a pdf which Docling was unable to parse properly, and there's another issue on that which I'm tracking https://github.com/docling-project/docling/issues/1376 for that. I thought maybe converting the table to image would help out so I checked out this open issue. Anyways, really appreciate your help!