Technology used to differentiate real warhead missiles from decoys is now also being used to diagnose possible oral cancer.

OralCDx Laboratories of New York has created a new BrushTest™ that is non invasive and can be used by dentists to analyze spots in the mouth that seem abnormal.

Jamie Laviola, a Lake Worth dentist, introduced the BrushTest™ to his practice back in June.

He said the test could be administered easily, eliminating the need for a biopsy to be taken from the mouth.

“You just swab the gum and pull off cells from it,” he said. “Then you put the cells onto a slide and send the slide to OralCDx.”

Laviola said the results are faxed back to his office, 115 JFK Drive, within four to five days.

Sharon Golubchik, spokeswoman for OralCDx, said with the new technology and eliminating the need for a biopsy, no one should even think twice about getting the new test done.

She said oral cancer kills as many Americans as melanoma, twice as many as cervical cancer, occurs nearly as frequently as leukemia and is rising among women, young people and non-smokers.

OralCDx was co-founded in 2000 by Mark Rutenberg, who brought over the technology for the BrushTest™ after working with the Star Wars program in the 1980s.

The Star Wars Strategic Defense Initiative was a proposal by President Ronald Reagan in 1983 to use ground and space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by strategic nuclear ballistic missiles.

The initiative focused on strategic defense which included using computer technology to differential decoys from real warheads if a missile broke into different pieces and a decoy overlapped a real warhead on the satellite image.

Rutenberg said in the Star Wars program, technology differentiated the real warheads from decoys so that defense could focus on the real warheads and not waste resources on decoys.

“It is similar technology where with the brush test if the cells on the slide overlap, the computer can still recognize the normal cells from abnormal cells,” Rutenberg said.

With the BrushTest™ technology, OralCDx is not fooled if a normal cell overlaps an abnormal cell on the microscope slide.

Laviola said the transition to the new technology has been easy and that he believes the BrushTest™ would become commonplace in future dentist visits.

For information about the BrushTest™, visit www.oralcdx.com.

Mike Rothman can be reached at mkrothman@tribune.com.