MIAMI, Fla. -- Despite massive strides in medical research, just talking about cervical cancer drives most women to white-knuckle fear. With more than 450,000 cases diagnosed worldwide each year, it's an inescapable topic. Still, if cervical cancer is caught early enough, it's curable 90 percent of the time. Doctors now have a method to boost that percentage even higher.

Take a couple smooches … Toss in some playtime … and little Gabriel is in heaven. Mom Gail Soares named her 20-month-old after the archangel Gabriel. But the news doctors delivered crushed her new mother glow.

"And all of a sudden that crashes when you go to your first doctor's appointment, and they tell you that you have abnormal cells,” Soares said.

Soares had cervical cancer. Tissue lining the inch-long canal on the lower end of her uterus was under attack. More than 11,000 women were diagnosed last year alone, with more than 4,000 deaths.

But doctors say the light touch machine could curb those numbers. It detects abnormal cells before cancer evolves by scanning skin tissue with light waves. And while typical Pap smear tests take 2-to-3 weeks in a lab, the light touch takes about one minute.

"Once we screen the patient, we can see the same image here as on the monitor,” Nahida Chakhtoura, MD an assistant professor of OB/GYN at the University of Miami Miler School of Medicine in Miami, Fla., explained.

"If you could find out right away, without all that uncomfortableness, I think more women would go out and get that test,” Soares said.

To save her life, Soares gave birth to Gabriel early then had a hysterectomy.

"You know, if I never found out I was pregnant, then I would've never found out I had the cancer, and he wouldn't be here right now,” Soares recalled.

She's now in remission. They say once you beat cancer, you're always vigilant. Good thing she has her little angel around to keep her focused.

The light touch machine has just completed the third, and final, phase of clinical trials. Previous studies have shown the machine could reduce the number of unnecessary follow-up procedures due to false-positive pap tests by up to 55 percent. That translates to a potential $181,000,000 per-year savings to the United States health care system.

Lighting Up Cervical Cancer -- Research Summary

BACKGROUND: According to the National Cancer Institute, cervical cancer is a cancer that forms in tissues of the cervix. It's usually a slow-growing cancer that may not have symptoms but can be found with regular Pap tests. The human papillomavirus (HPV) is a major risk factor for development of cervical cancer. Statistics show that there were more than 11,000 new cases of cervical cancer in the United States in 2009, and more than 4,000 of those cases ended in death.

TREATMENT: Three types of standard treatments are used to treat cervical cancer: surgery, radiation therapy or chemotherapy. New types of therapies are being tested in clinical trials.

LIGHT TOUCH MACHINE: Researchers are now investigating a new, non-invasive test that has the potential to improve the early detection of cervical cancer. The LightTouch machine does not require a tissue sample or the delay of lab analysis like current techniques. "The advantage that you have for the patient is that this is an automated reading, so once it becomes permanent, you will have an image that will come out that you can communicate to the patient right then after the visit instead of having to wait for results," Nahida Chakhtoura, M.D., an assistant professor of OB/GYN at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, told Ivanhoe.

LightTouch works by analyzing light reflected from the cervix. It creates an image of the cervix for the doctor that highlights the location and severity of disease. In a clinical trial, sponsored by the National Cancer Institute, LightTouch reduced the number of unnecessary follow-up procedures as a result of false positive Pap tests by 55-percent. "It's exciting to see how we can apply new technology into something that we normally do and improve our standards on how we evaluate patients for pre-cancerous disease and cancer," Dr. Chakhtoura said.