By following the example provided at http://poi.apache.org/slideshow/how-to-shapes.html i got the conversion to work.
FileInputStream is = new FileInputStream("slideshow.ppt");
SlideShow ppt = new SlideShow(is);
is.close();
Dimension pgsize = ppt.getPageSize();
Slide[] slide = ppt.getSlides();
for (int i = 0; i < slide.length; i++){
BufferedImage img = new BufferedImage(pgsize.width, pgsize.height, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB);
Graphics2D graphics = img.createGraphics();
graphics.setPaint(Color.white);
graphics.fill(new Rectangle2D.Float(0, 0, pgsize.width, pgsize.height));
slide[i].draw(graphics);
FileOutputStream out = new FileOutputStream("slide-" + (i+1) + ".png");
javax.imageio.ImageIO.write(img, "png", out);
out.close();
}
However the generated images are very small. How do increase the size of the image output?