CLEVELAND -- Researchers have found a new way to hunt for cancer cells, possibly before even the most sensitive equipment could detect them.

They're not using expensive hospital equipment, but rather, man's best friend.

Shing Ling, 2, is more than just a furry companion for researcher Michael McCulloch.

He and other researchers are developing a pilot program to train dogs to identify who has cancer.

"(Cancer patients) have a different bouquet of odor that's detectable to the dog," he said.

McCulloch collects breath samples for both lung cancer patients and healthy patients.

Shing Ling is being trained to detect which is which.

"The project is to very carefully measure how good the dog is at distinguishing between lung cancer samples from a normal person," McCulloch said.

Dogs have 40 times the number of scent-receiving cells in their noses than humans have, making them able to sense the most minute scents given off by tumor cells.

The goal with the dogs is to detect tumors before the most sophisticated technology can.

Shing Ling's trainer commands the dog to tell him which one smells like cancer. When the dog chooses which one she thinks has the cancer scent, she taps it with her paw.

After a year and a half of perfecting the training methods, he said Shing Ling is right 87 percent of the time. But many doctors won't believe it until real evidence comes in.

McCulloch isn't the only researcher with these ideas. Scientists in Florida and England are also seeing if the dogs' noses know.