How to render images inside a flextable in R Markdown

I'm trying to render image inside a flextable with R Markdown, which on render gives word document.

Sample R Markdown code:

---
title: "Untitled"
output: word_document
params:
  img_path1: Excel whole.png
---

library(officer)
library(flextable)
library(kableExtra)

virus_summary <- data.frame(
  Task = "Word Table",
  "Completion Date" = as.character(format(Sys.Date(), '%B %d, %Y')),
   stringsAsFactors = FALSE
 )

 img_object <- as_image(src = "./Excel whole.png", width = 1)



 virus_tbl <- virus_summary |>
   flextable() |>
   compose(
     j = "Task",
     i = 1,
     value = as_paragraph(
       as_chunk("\n"),
       as_chunk("Word Table"),
       as_chunk("\n"),
       as_chunk("\n"),
       img_object
    )
   ) |>
  border_remove() |>
   hline(part = "all", border = fp_border(color="black")) |>
   vline(border = fp_border(color="black")) |>
   vline_left(border = fp_border(color="black")) |>
   hline_top(part = "all", border = fp_border(color="black")) |>
   bold(bold = TRUE, part = "header") |>
   width(width = 7.9, j = 1,unit = "cm") |>
   width(width = 6.5, j = 2,unit = "cm") |>
   padding(padding = 10, part = "all")

 virus_tbl

In here you can use any image as you want.

Problem: When I run the code chunk only the image path is showing up instead of the image inside the table and same while knitting the R Markdown into word document.

Output of above code: Output Table

I get an error while running your script because source parameter for image of flextable::as_image() is src and not x. With kableExtra, there is also a function named as_image(), solution is to use the following:

img_object <- flextable::as_image(src = img.file, width = 1)

Without the conflicts that could happen with kableExtra, another point is that images in flextable can not be outputed with rmarkdown::word_document(), it must be processed with officedown. See the note in as_image() documentation:

This chunk option requires package officedown in a R Markdown context with Word output format.