you might find this http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu/blog/2016/03/21/Displaying-image-overlays-on-image-filenames-in-Emacs/ potentially useful for what you want.
stardiviner writes: > I want to show org-contacts avatar image on org-headings. > Use overlay, or there is other better methods? > > A sample org-contacts snippet looks like this: > > * [] John KK > :PROPERTIES: > :AVATAR: john kk.jpg [] > :END: > > I want to display the image at [] on heading, or replace "john kk.jpg" > with [] image. > > BTW, another question, how to get property's value? and how to iterate > on all heading elements then auto display image when open Contacts.org > file? -- Professor John Kitchin Doherty Hall A207F Department of Chemical Engineering Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213 412-268-7803 @johnkitchin http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu