Word Automation, reading word document in XML format

[R1gg4]

Hi all,

I currently have a VB.NET application that interfaces with Word 2003 to
produce documents from templates substituting the data in the template to
form the document. This is all working including substituting images.

However it is very slow as it uses the Word Object model to directly control
the word.searchreplace function.

I am now trying to change what we have so that it does the substitution in
an XML formatted version of the word template document, which seems to be
much easier.

However, I now have a problem substituting images.

The images in the word XML file are as below

<w:binData
w:name="wordml://02000001.jpg">/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQEASABIAAD/2wBDAAEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEB
AQEBAQICAQECAQEBAgICAgICAgICAQICAgICAgICAgL/2wBDAQEBAQEBAQEBAQECAQEBAgICAgIC
AgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAg ICAgICAgL/wAARCAgABgADASIA
etc..

My question is does anyone know what format the binary data is in? and how
to convert it to an Image type in .NET?

I have tried simple converting from a Base64 string then writing to a
stream, then reading into an image but that does not work. Anyone any ideas?

Any and all help much appreciated.
R.