Well I stumbled upon this site when I was looking at templates for websites. http://templatenavigator.com/ I was wondering if this complied with policies?
Strictly speaking, there should be some sort of border between the pictures and the ads. However, I doubt Adsense would say anything since they are not aligned to look as part of the ads.
It doesn't attract the eyes to the ads.. but placing images near ads is very ambiguous when it comes to crossing the line or not. I would contact google just in case.
I wouldn't do it. It's just too close and they have no function, purpose, or meaning on their own, hence they are there strictly to draw attention to the adsense ads.