$fcontents = file_get_contents($imgname);
$im = @imagecreatefromstring($fcontents);

$loader = new ElphinIcoFileLoaderIcoFileService;
$im = $loader->extractIcon('/path/to/icon.ico', 32, 32);

//$im is a GD image resource, so we could, for example, save this as a PNG
imagepng($im, '/path/to/output.png');