Researchers have found a way to make cancer cells vibrate, and by using laser techniques from optics and ultrasound techniques from acoustics, listen for the sound of cancer cells. By taking blood samples from actual cancer patients, and listening for the sound, they were able to detect the presence of cancer when as few as ten cancer cells were present in a blood sample.

The loud cracking sound that the cancer cells emit is caused by a process in which cancer cells absorb energy bursts from a blue-laser light, causing them to go through rapid cycles of expanding as they heat up and shrinking as they cool down. This new technique of identifying cancer cells through a simple blood sample will allow oncologists to detect very early signs of cancer spreading as the cancer cells are traveling before they settle into an organ in the body.

According to the University of Missouri-Columbia researchers, current techniques to monitor cancer spread and recurrence have proven to be inaccurate, time-consuming and painful. This new blood-test procedure would eliminate some of those less-accurate procedures and could be done on a regular basis with immediate results. "It could take just 30 minutes to find out if there are any circulating cancer cells," stated John Viator, a biomedical engineer at Missouri-Columbia and a coauthor of the Optics Letters study.