Madeleine Robb was at home in Stretford when an internet chatroom friend from Florida forwarded a picture of her daughter.
The 32-year-old business analyst - who has no medical training - spotted an unusual white shadow on the eye of one-year-old Rowan Santos and went on to the web to find out more.
She found it could be a symptom of a form of eye cancer called Retinoblastoma and sent an e-mail to alert Rowan's mother Megan, also 32, at her home 4,300 miles away in Tampa.
Within hours, Mrs Santos had taken Rowan to a doctor, who found a large tumour in her left eye - and the youngster is now having chemotherapy.
Doctors say Madeleine's alert may have saved Rowan's life, although she will still lose an eye.
Madeleine, who also has a one-year-old daughter Lileth, met Rowan's mother through a pregnancy website when they were both expecting their babies.
The girls were born on the same day in August 2007 and the families kept in touch, e-mailing photos of them growing up.
Mrs Santos, who lives with husband David in Tampa, said she had seen a slight change in Rowan's eye colour, but the white shadow was only visible in a flash photo. The cancer was not detected when Rowan had a routine check-up at nine months.
Mrs Santos said: "Grateful cannot even begin to describe how we feel toward Maddie.
"Do I consider Madeline our hero? Most certainly - if she hadn't sent that e-mail, Rowan's prognosis wouldn't be as good as it is.
"One more week and the tumour could have hit her optic nerve."
Mrs Robb, who is married to Doug, said: "I didn't do anything special, but it shows how important it is to be aware of symptoms.
"Apparently, it shows up more on photos and new parents take pictures of their children all the time - they just have to know what to look for."
Retinoblastoma symptoms include an odd-looking, white pupil or red and inflamed eye, worsened vision or a squint.
Early detection can allow for more localised treatment and avoid the need for surgery.
For information visit cancerresearchuk.org Tweet
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she didn't take the baby to a doctor as soon as she spotted the eye? what the...
Well done the woman for caring enough to research.
She might not have taken her to a doctor because the shadow could be only visible in the kind of light that the camera flash gives out, like how people in photos get red eye from the flash's light going through the pupil bouncing off their retina (as is my understanding)
Marc, not everybody is as well read/informed as some of us might be, I think it's a great thing that such a horrid disease can be picked up by the average camera, better still that it can be recognised so easily by someone who does not have a medical background, I came accross this phenonema around 3 years ago, purely by chance, otherwise I might have seen this pic & thought it was just a 'quirk' of the camera.
I have heard of this sort of thing before, but it was a mum in the uk with twins who took a picture of both of them and noticed the same sort of thing on the picture, that one of her childrens eyes wasn't right.
it didn't occur to me that the camera may have picked up the shadow on the eye. what a stroke of luck for the girl!
i would really like to thank madeline robb not only did she save baby rowan she also saved my baby brooke at the very same time the night before the article was published in the daily morror we had a nocticed something different about our 7 wks old daughters eye but we wernt that concerned on till we read the daily mirror the very next day we took our daughter to see our gp who referred her to an eye specialist who confirmed that she had retinoblastoma in both eyes and with in one week of being diagnosed she had started her chemotherapy at the age of just 8 wks she is still having laser and cryotherapy at the minute but is doing really well i cant thank madeline enough because had the article not been published i dread to think what i would be facing today thank you madeline from baby Brooke McClafferty and all her family and our thoughts are with baby rowan and family as we know how difficult a time it is we hope she is doing really well xxx