The way Racket embeds images into your source code is actually somewhat interesting. If a `.rkt` file includes a rich element (eg. image, table, GUI structure, etc.) then the result file format is not strictly human-readable anymore. Instead, the source code is stored in the homegrown 'WXME' format which, while text-based, is not actually human-parsable anymore. That makes source code diffs a pain.
Emacs could technically parse these files on load and write them on save, but that might be a bit tricky. The Racket library that reads and writes this format is documented at http://docs.racket-lang.org/gui/WXME_Decoding.html?q=wxme .
As for supporting WXME format files: Although that sounds very cool, I don't think that's within the scope of what I want to attempt for racket-mode (or have time to do) now.
p.s. The video of my demo at RacketCon was posted recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWiteH8PARQ&list=LLoI3ip0MG_...
p.p.s. My "30 year old technology" comment was re the previous speaker. I am definitely not begin derogatory about Emacs. :)