diff --git a/news/changelog-1.4.md b/news/changelog-1.4.md
index 749573e78b..4da357c4e7 100644
--- a/news/changelog-1.4.md
+++ b/news/changelog-1.4.md
@@ -223,6 +223,10 @@
 - ([#6620](https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/issues/6620)): Introduce `FloatRefTarget` AST nodes that generalize crossref targets to include figures, tables, and custom floating elements.
 - ([#7200](https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/issues/7200)): Support Unicode in subref labels.
 
+## Input format
+
+- ([#7905](https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/issues/7905)): Use `html+raw_html` as input format when processing HTML rawblocks for tables to avoid Pandoc converting SVG elements to images.
+
 ## Other Fixes and Improvements
 
 - Exit if project pre or post render script fails
diff --git a/src/resources/filters/normalize/parsehtml.lua b/src/resources/filters/normalize/parsehtml.lua
index cb2a4b2d0a..127f34f169 100644
--- a/src/resources/filters/normalize/parsehtml.lua
+++ b/src/resources/filters/normalize/parsehtml.lua
@@ -53,6 +53,13 @@ function parse_html_tables()
           return nil
         end
 
+        -- we're already at a state of sin here, cf https://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454
+        -- but this is important enough to do a little more work anyway
+        -- 
+        -- specifically, we should do our best not to break good HTML when it's there
+
+
+
         local tableBegin,tableBody,tableEnd = el.text:match(pat)
         if tableBegin then
           local before_table = string.sub(el.text, 1, i - 1)
@@ -75,7 +82,9 @@ function parse_html_tables()
           -- annotated td elements with th elements.
 
           tableHtml = preprocess_table_text(tableHtml)
-          local tableDoc = pandoc.read(tableHtml, "html")
+          -- process html with raw_html so that contents that are not parseable
+          -- by Pandoc end up as rawblock elements
+          local tableDoc = pandoc.read(tableHtml, "html+raw_html")
           local skip = false
           local found = false
           _quarto.ast.walk(tableDoc, {
diff --git a/tests/docs/smoke-all/2023/11/10/7905.qmd b/tests/docs/smoke-all/2023/11/10/7905.qmd
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..5ecb26956e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/docs/smoke-all/2023/11/10/7905.qmd
@@ -0,0 +1,17 @@
+---
+title: "7905"
+_quarto:
+  tests:
+    html:
+      ensureFileRegexMatches:
+        - []
+        - 
+          - "svg\\+xml" # can't use ensureHtmlElements because svg is not part of the HTML DOM
+           # so we instead ensure that pandoc didn't transform svg into data-uri-encoded image
+---
+
+```{=html}
+<table>
+<tr><td><svg width="300" height="300"></svg></td></tr>
+</table>
+```