Figured it out! The solution is very clunky and involves editing the source code because I am very bad at regex and the _DoImage() function uses a lot of internal functions only in the source.
solution:
All edits will be made to the markdown.converter file.
do a ctrl+f for the _DoImage function, you will find that it is named in two places, one in the RunSpanGamut and one defining the function. The solution is simple, copy over the DoImage function and related stuff to a new one in order to mimic the original function and edit it to taste.
next to DoImage function add:
function _DoPotatoImages(text) {
text = text.replace(/(\?\[(.*?)\][ ]?(?:\n[ ]*)?\[(.*?)\])()()()()/g, writePotatoImageTag);
text = text.replace(/(\?\[(.*?)\]\s?\([ \t]*()<?(\S+?)>?[ \t]*((['"])(.*?)\6[ \t]*)?\))/g, writePotatoImageTag);
return text;
}
function writePotatoImageTag(wholeMatch, m1, m2, m3, m4, m5, m6, m7) {
var whole_match = m1;
var alt_text = m2;
var link_id = m3.toLowerCase();
var url = m4;
var title = m7;
if (!title) title = "";
if (url == "") {
if (link_id == "") {
link_id = alt_text.toLowerCase().replace(/ ?\n/g, " ");
}
url = "#" + link_id;
if (g_urls.get(link_id) != undefined) {
url = g_urls.get(link_id);
if (g_titles.get(link_id) != undefined) {
title = g_titles.get(link_id);
}
}
else {
return whole_match;
}
}
alt_text = escapeCharacters(attributeEncode(alt_text), "*_[]()");
url = escapeCharacters(url, "*_");
var result = "<img src=\"" + url + "\" alt=\"" + alt_text + "\"";
title = attributeEncode(title);
title = escapeCharacters(title, "*_");
result += " title=\"" + title + "\"";
result += " class=\"p\" />";
return result;
}
if you look at the difference between the new _DoPotatoImages() function and the original _DoImages(), you will notice I edited the regex to have an escaped question mark \? instead of the normal exclamation mark !
Also notice how the writePotatoImageTag calls g_urls and g_titles which are some of the internal functions that are called.
After that, add your text = _DoPotatoImages(text); to runSpanGamut function (MAKE SURE YOU ADD IT BEFORE THE text = _DoAnchors(text); LINE BECAUSE THAT FUNCTION WILL OVERRIDE IMAGE TAGS) and now you should be able to write ?[image desc](url) along with 
done.