Ufff, it's like saying : "I want to go from Paris to New York, but I don't want to take an air plane", it's technically possible but you're not really chosing the easiest way.
Basically you have to know the format of your image, read the binary data and convert it to an 2D array of pixel (that will be your image), and then you have to redevelop the equivalent of the IMAQ analysis functions. Good luck!
This is not "normal", can you show the code you use to load your image?
By the way, what is the format of your image and how do you acquire the image?