Some controversial reports suggest that man's best friend can sniff out cancer. Now, an intriguing study raises the prospect that tumors not only have a special smell. They may sound funny too.
American researchers say they've used a technique called photoacoustic detection to bombard a person's blood cells with laser pulses. When they're hit, mestasizing skin cancer cells make a certain high-frequency sound that can be detected by a computer.
The research is preliminary, and appears in an obscure journal -- something with the rather uninspiring title of Optics Letters -- suggesting it may not be ready for prime time. [A follow-up: Read the comments for another view on the journal and more information about how the technology works. -RD]
