CNN-affiliate WREX reported that an Illinois mother has said that she discovered her son had cancer after capturing a photograph of him with her camera phone.

The cell phone photo may have come as a life saver for a 2-year-old boy as it has after revealed a rare cancer in his eye.

Julie Fitzgerald told WREX that around two months before the photo was taken she noticed something odd about her son Avery’s eye. When the light would shine at a certain angle she thought that she could see something in his pupil.

She was not able to figure out what exactly she was looking at, thus she decided to search the Internet for answers.

Through internet she came to know about a woman whose family photo led to a cancer diagnosis when the flash turned one of her relative’s pupils white instead of red in the image.

Fitzgerald’s husband Patrick told her it was probably nothing. He suggested her not to assume the worst after reading the article. Fitzgerald growing sense of concern about Avery led her to pick the phone and take a photo.

She told WREX, “I did not want to take the picture because I had this dreaded feeling in the pit of my stomach. And I took the picture and boom. His whole pupil was just white and that’s when I knew”.

She immediately rushed Avery to a specialist who took a look at her son and gave her the bad news that her little boy had retinoblastoma.

While recalling the meeting, Fitzgerald said that the specialist took one look and said that ‘there are multiple, multiple tumors’. Doctors can’t save his eye.

However, the specialist told Fitzgerald that if it had remained undetected then the cancer could have spread to his brain and blood.

For now, Avery is going to receive a prosthetic eye. His family is happy as the cancer appears to be completely removed.