DOCTORS took their inspiration from dolphins when they developed the revolutionary "magic eye" cancer scanner.

When the state-of-the-art equipment was being developed, designers drew ideas from the dolphins' unique sonar navigation system.

The result, the ultrasound endoscope, which will help doctors diagnose accurately how far a cancer has spread by looking inside the body with a special all-seeing eye.

It uses pulses of sound to navigate, like sonar, which helps it to see through the layers of the stomach and oesophagus to find out whether tumours have spread.

For staff already working with the state-of-the-art equipment at the Royal Liverpool Hospital, it has meant a major improvement in how accurately they can diagnose the cancers and decide how best to treat them.

Consultant gastroenterologist and clinical director of the department at the hospital which deals witht he cancers, Martin Lombard, said: "The idea of all this investigation for cancer is to make sure that we operate on the right patients. We don't operate on them if it is not going to make a difference. We need to exclude some patients in a positive way.

"It has proven useful to us and the reason they will want to use it in East Lancashire, is because it is the best technique for staging tumours of the oesophagus."

"Sometimes we might be dealing with a patient who has pancreatitis and we might find a small tumour. Such tumours, when they are very small, would not have been picked up with any other type of scanning. In general, as most people know, the smaller the tumour, the better the chance of curing it."

The endoscope uses a tiny balloon filled with water around the tiny camera to get its pictures inside the body and is inserted down the throat on the end of a flexible tube.

With its ultra-sensitive camera, it brings the accuracy for doctors to 10 per cent higher than a CT scan would be and higher than an MRI scan would be.

Mr Lombard said: "Nobody is ever going to get to 100 per cent accuracy - it is not really possible in any tests, but with this equipment we can be over 90 per cent accurate."

The images seen by the camera are then beamed up to a screen which doctors can see, giving them instant access to the pictures.

There is also a fingertip freeze-frame control for doctors to take a longer look at an image and the pictures can be magnified up to 12cm.

Although it would be impossible to match survival rates to the introduction of the endoscope to the unit several years ago, Mr Lombard said it had improved the quality of service to patients considerably, as well as saving time, so that more patients could be seen.

"We do procedures through this that are easier and we can do them as outpatients. They also take up less of our time.

"For those patients, we provide a better quality of service. They won't have to have surgery, which is a great improvement for them."

Surgeons at the hospital also have the technology to carry out biopsies with the new equipment. A needle can be inserted into the tumour through the endoscope in a biopsy channel, making it quicker and less invasive.

It means patients, who would previously have had to be in hospital for some time, could be dealt with as outpatients and go home much sooner.

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