Any whitepapers? (2 sites max.)

Good question. To add some speculation as opposed to hard facts, I don't think images ever get PageRank (the toolbar doesn't show any, apparently) but it would only make sense for them to inherit some sort of value from the page they're embedded in.

this is a old article , i have some more old research stuff ..need to verify status before sharing

http://www.unt.edu/ir/papers/cir00.htm