  We present an extension of the spectral deconvolution method (Sparks & Ford
2002) to achieve very high contrast at small inner working radii. We apply the
method to the specific case of ground based adaptive optics fed integral field
spectroscopy (without a coronagraph). Utilising the wavelength dependence of
the Airy and speckle patterns, we make an accurate estimate of the PSF that can
be scaled and subtracted from the data cube. The residual noise in the
resulting spectra is very close to the photon noise from the starlight halo. We
utilise the technique to extract a very high SNR H & K band spectrum of AB Dor
C, the low mass companion to AB Dor A. By effectively eliminating all
contamination from AB Dor A, the extracted spectrum retains both continuum and
spectral features. The achieved 1 sigma contrast is 9 mag at 0.2", 11 mag at
0.5", in 20 mins exposure time, at an effective spectral bandwidth of 5.5 nm,
proving that the method is applicable even in low Strehl regimes.
  The spectral deconvolution method clearly demonstrates the efficacy of image
slicer based IFUs in achieving very high contrast imaging spectroscopy at small
angular separations, validating their use as high contrast
spectrographs/imagers for extreme adaptive optics systems.
