Are 16 bit images supported by Caffe? If not, how to implement support?

Background information: I need to load some 16 bit grayscale PNGs.

Does Caffe support loading 16 bit images through the ImageDataLayer?

After some googling, the answer seems it doesn't. The ImageDataLayer relies on this io routine

cv::Mat ReadImageToCVMat(const string& filename,
    const int height, const int width, const bool is_color) {
  cv::Mat cv_img;
  int cv_read_flag = (is_color ? CV_LOAD_IMAGE_COLOR :
    CV_LOAD_IMAGE_GRAYSCALE);
  cv::Mat cv_img_origin = cv::imread(filename, cv_read_flag);
  if (!cv_img_origin.data) {
    LOG(ERROR) << "Could not open or find file " << filename;
    return cv_img_origin;
  }
  if (height > 0 && width > 0) {
    cv::resize(cv_img_origin, cv_img, cv::Size(width, height));
  } else {
    cv_img = cv_img_origin;
  }
  return cv_img;
}

Which uses opencv's cv::imread function. This function will read the input as 8bits unless the appropiate flag is set

CV_LOAD_IMAGE_ANYDEPTH - If set, return 16-bit/32-bit image when the input has the corresponding depth, otherwise convert it to 8-bit.

Simply adding the appropriate flag will not work because later in the code [io.cpp] they check for 8bit depth:

void CVMatToDatum(const cv::Mat& cv_img, Datum* datum) {
  CHECK(cv_img.depth() == CV_8U) << "Image data type must be unsigned byte";
... }

I could just remove the check but I'm afraid it's there for a reason and unpredictable results might happen. Can anybody shine light on this issue?