New York, Oct 22 (IANS) Scientists have developed a sound technique that could spot the spread of melanoma cancer - the deadliest form of skin cancer - in just 30 minutes.

The American Cancer Society predicts more than 62,000 new melanoma patients and about 7,900 deaths from the disease in the US this year. Treated early, the cancer is nearly 100 percent curable.

John Viator and colleagues at the University of Missouri-Columbia figured out a technique to hear melanoma cancer cells as they spread through the blood, reported the online edition of health magazine WebMD.

For their experiments, the researchers took blood samples from a 29-year-old white man with melanoma that had spread. The scientists aimed a laser at the blood sample to make any melanin in the blood produce sound energy.

"The only reason there could be melanin in the human blood is that there would be melanoma cells," Viator explains.

The researchers needed an amplifier to hear the melanin. But it took only 10 melanoma cells for them to pick up the sound.

"Our method can help doctors plan treatment to battle the spread of the disease," Viator says in the article in the journal Optic Letters published by the Optical Society of America.

If the technique succeeds, "it could take just 30 minutes to find out if there are any circulating cancer cells," Viator says.

But he added that larger studies and tests are needed to see if similar sound strategies could spot other cancers as they spread.