Early lung cancer detection saves lives, but screening costs money and is inconvenient. A new screening tool aims to solve that problem, using a tractor-trailer to bring a hi-speed, low dose CT lung scanner to New Yorkers.

“Lung cancer is the number one cancer killer, more than breast, colon and prostate cancer combined,” Dr. Bradley Pua of the Weill Cornell Medical Center.

Pua is the chief physician with the center for the early detection of cancer. He explained a major reason lung cancer is so deadly is that by the time people have enough symptoms to go to the doctor, the cancer is already advanced and spread. The mobile unit could change all that.

“If we find small nodules we can give therapy that increases survival to 75% to 90%,” he said.