My 16 gig card recently quit working totally. The only thing on the card that wasn't backed up to my LT was the last two pics I took with the TouchPro camera.
One of them has to be the best pic I ever took with a camera phone (of course). I did assign that pic to a contact & it still shows there & in the carousel.
If you back up your contacts using PIM Backup it will save it. Im not sure of a way to get the pic back to memory on the card or the phone but you still will have the pic for that contact.