WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A new laser analyzer mightbe able to help doctors detect cancer, asthma or other diseases bysampling a patient’s breath, U.S. researchers reported onTuesday.

The device uses mirrors to bounce the laser’s light back andforth until it has touched every molecule a patient exhales in asingle breath, the team reported in the journal Optics Express.

This can help detect minute traces of compounds that can pointto various diseases, including cancer, asthma, diabetes and kidneymalfunction, they said.

“This technique can give a broad picture of many differentmolecules in the breath all at once,” Jun Ye, who led the researchat the University of Colorado, said in a statement.

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