Yes, you can but there are better options. To do as you're suggesting you can modify your mame emulator.cfg to temporarily point the rom path to the wheel art folder and change your extensions to be .png;.jpeg. Build your romlist and then switch the file back to the original settings.
Configure-->Emulators-->MAME
rompath /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade/wheel
romext .png;jpeg
Your best option is to use a program like romlister to create the file you really want.
https://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/You can also look at a files made by members on the forum like this one.
http://forum.attractmode.org/index.php?topic=1060.0You can use the the "edit game" option to hide games you don't want to see. Configure-->Controls-->Edit Game =
some-button. Then you can hightlight a game and press
some-button to edit the game settings.
You can use global filters or regular filters to hide most of the bs. Something like this.
filter "Clean List"
rule Title not_contains bootleg|prototype
rule Year not_contains ?
rule Manufacturer not_contains bootleg
rule Category not_contains Mature|Casino|Mahjong|Multiplay|Quiz|Rhythm
rule Players contains 1|2|3|4
rule Control contains joystick
rule Control contains 2-way|4-way|8-way
rule Status equals good|imperfect
rule DisplayCount equals 1