Well, what you have to do is place the image in the background of the <td>
like so:
HTML Code:
<table> <tr> <td style="background-image:url(images/index_01.jpg); width: 200px; height: 500px;">
text text text text text text text text
</td> </tr> </table>
As you can see, i used css styles to put the image in the background of the table, and then defined the width and height, so it doesnt mess up the layout.