How to preserve images in an xls sheet edited via xlrd?

Question

I'm using xlrd to edit a few cells in an Excel sheet (.xls). I'm able to preserve cell formatting of the edited info (using this little hack). However, when the file is saved, all the images in the document are lost. Is there a way to keep them?

I know xlsxwrite can insert images into a worksheet, but the file in question isn't .xlsx, unfortunately.

Here's the code:

from xlrd import open_workbook
from xlutils.copy import copy

class Writetoxls(object):

    def __init__(self, ip, mac, ssid, wifipass, user, password):
        self.ip = ip
        self.mac = mac
        self.ssid = ssid
        self.wifipass = wifipass
        self.user = user
        self.password = password

        inBook = open_workbook('data.xls', formatting_info=True)
        outBook = copy(inBook)

        def _getOutCell(outSheet, colIndex, rowIndex):
            """ HACK: Extract the internal xlwt cell representation. """
            row = outSheet._Worksheet__rows.get(rowIndex)
            if not row: return None

            cell = row._Row__cells.get(colIndex)
            return cell

        def setOutCell(outSheet, col, row, value):
            """ Change cell value without changing formatting. """
            # HACK to retain cell style.
            previousCell = _getOutCell(outSheet, col, row)
            # END HACK, PART I

            outSheet.write(row, col, value)

            # HACK, PART II
            if previousCell:
                newCell = _getOutCell(outSheet, col, row)
                if newCell:
                    newCell.xf_idx = previousCell.xf_idx
                    # END HACK

        outSheet = outBook.get_sheet(0)
        setOutCell(outSheet, 3, 7, mac)
        setOutCell(outSheet, 4, 16, ssid)
        setOutCell(outSheet, 4, 17, wifipass)

        outBook.save('output.xls')

Thank you.