Patent Number: 
Section: claims

1. A method for deconvolving far-field optical images for improved image resolution, comprising:positioning a near-field optical probe source at specific regions of an object to be imaged which correspond to specific pixels in far-field imaging modalities;moving the probe source with respect to a surface of the object to obtain associated detailed near-field information on the relative heights of point sources on the surface and detailed information on borders of the object;obtaining far-field optical image data corresponding to the object through a lens simultaneously with obtaining said near field information;moving the object to be imaged with respect to said lens with nanometric precision using a scanned probe microscope;recording said far-field optical data and any additional information the scanned probe microscope can provide on height, optical or other parameters of the object from at least one near-field image;determining the point spread function (PSF) of the far-field imaging lens using the near-field information;incorporating the recorded near-field information from the scanned probe microscope with said far-field data in deconvolution algorithms for added precision of the far-field imaging to obtain a deconvolved super-resolution image of the object to be imaged. 2. The method of claim 1, wherein obtaining said super-resolution image includes obtaining the point spread function of the lens with only atomic force topography information. 3. The method of claim 1, wherein obtaining said near-field optical data includes scanning said object with subwavelength resolution to define optical contrast points on said object. 4. The method of claim 1, wherein the far-field image is recorded by non-linear optical imaging. 5. The method of claim 2, wherein the far-field image is recorded by non-linear optical imaging. 6. The method of claim 3, wherein the far-field image data is recorded by non linear optical imaging. 7. A method for deconvolving far-field optical images for improved image resolution, including:producing a set of integrated and correlated near and far-field images; andvalidating the correlation of the images by a scanned probe microscope. 8. The method of claim 7, further including:computing the error between a deconvolved optical image and one or more points of an image obtained by the scanned probe microscope; andcomputing a newly deconvolved image based on the computed error. 9. The method of claim 8, wherein the deconvolved image is computed using a closed loop algorithm in which the error is checked and minimized between computed data and actual highly accurate data obtained from scanned probe microscopy. 10. The method of claim 8, wherein optical deconvolution is aided by correlated data sets from other microscopes simultaneously imaging the object at higher resolution than optical imaging. 11. A method for deconvolving far-field optical images for improved image resolution, comprising:combining atomic force microscope imaging of an object with near-field scanned probe optical imaging to provide two images of the object;altering a parameter associated with the scanned probe imagery in the near field optical image, andcorelating the images by data from the atomic force microscope. 12. A method for deconvolving far-field optical images for improved image resolution, comprising:incorporating a scanned probe device into any optical microscope with an image recording modality and without obstructing any of the imaging modes of the optical microscope;recording completely integrated image data sets from the scanned probe microscope and from the optical microscope in a computer; andproviding associated software including a deconvolution algorithm in the computer for deconvolution of the image data sets to provide corresponding images. 13. The method of claim 12, wherein deconvolution is iterative, utilizing the error between a prior deconvolved image and scanned data.