It appears that octave-image 2.4.0 requires c++11:
checking whether g++ supports C++11 features by default... no
checking whether g++ supports C++11 features with -std=gnu++11... no
checking whether g++ supports C++11 features with -std=gnu++0x... no
checking whether g++ supports C++11 features with -std=c++11... no
checking whether g++ supports C++11 features with -std=c++0x... no
configure: error: *** A compiler with support for C++11 language
features is required.
While I can very much sympathize with wanting to have progress, just
note that it is a bit trickier (though not impossible) to get access to
a C++11 compiler on RHEL6. Just something I wanted to note.