National Forensic Doctor
Chapter 677 - 620 Botanists

Chapter 677: Chapter 620 Botanists

Conference room.

The begonia flowers on the windowsill were a soft pink, and the ashtray had been carefully cleaned of cigarette butts by a botanist, making for a pleasant scent.

The conference room was very quiet, with only the sound of a frustrated person shaking a pen that had run out of ink.

Huang Qiangmin hastily summoned a batch of pens over, finally resolving the issue.

The botanists then went back to working in silence.

For Sulei and others, botany itself was a dull science that didn’t require much verbal communication—most knowledge came from years of accumulation.

This made her doubt Jiang Yuan’s botanical abilities. Considering his age alone, a student like Jiang Yuan could at best be a graduate student who had only just begun his doctoral studies. This was because, logically, an undergraduate or master’s student wouldn’t have had the time to accumulate enough botanical knowledge.

Not every botanist could recognize all the plants in a botanical garden, and many might not identify most of them. However, knowing all the plants in a botanical garden was still far from being a botanist.

With Sulei’s way of thinking, it was easy for her to consider that if Jiang Yuan lacked genuine expertise in forensic botany, then the botanical evidence passed through his hands might be highly problematic.

At this thought, Sulei’s sense of social responsibility instantly exploded.

And her scientific spirit led her to focus on her work at hand.

She believed that the conclusion of her work would be the best explanation!

The video extracted from the drone was divided into a grid of images. Sulei enlarged each one to take a closer look, marked the spots that raised doubts, and then reviewed them in detail, finding the process quite comfortable.

After jotting down a couple of notes, Sulei asked a fellow botanist, "Who processed these images? They seem almost as good as satellite remote sensing images. The image enhancement is pretty well done too."

Satellite remote sensing images are a necessary application step—it’s only after image correction, enhancement, and information extraction that manual interpretation is performed.

The image area that Jiang Yuan and the others were dealing with might not be as extensive as satellite remote sensing images, but without computer aid, the difficulty would be too high, and the number of reworks would undoubtedly be many. The current method clearly involved a more advanced approach, significantly improving accuracy and convenience.

The earlier arriving botanist also seemed very satisfied, smiling and mouthing off, "Captain Jiang did the image enhancement. Rumor has it he’s self-taught from working with video surveillance and such."

"This..." Sulei was instantly at a loss for words: "Self-taught in video surveillance, image enhancement, and botany all at the same time?"

"Umm..." The earlier botanist clearly didn’t think it was normal either, but he lacked the energy to refute it.

Sulei blinked, glanced around, and said, "Among us five botanists here, it seems none of us know how to process satellite remote sensing images, right?"

"Because we are botanists!" another botanist emphasized.

"But is it normal for a forensic doctor to know satellite remote sensing image processing?" Sulei looked at the images on her computer. Not to mention anything else, the geometric correction alone was done very nicely. Modern botanists almost always deal with satellite images, including those from drone aerial photography, because the raw images are distorted due to the photographic material, lens distortion, atmospheric refraction, and never truly aligned.

And the correction of these... in simple terms, is much more difficult than using Photoshop for enhancing someone’s appearance.

Apart from that, the original images captured are not always clear. Adjusting the contrast, color composition, density segmentation, and image fusion are all essential.

Finally, even image cropping is part of image pre-processing.

Sulei, having seen both comfortably and poorly processed images, now felt that the images she was dealing with were among the best-processed she had encountered.

The few botanists in the room, with deeper experience than Sulei and having seen more images, began to praise Jiang Yuan upon hearing the subject being discussed.

Jiang Yuan humbly said, "Our forensic studies are indeed quite complex, with specialized branches such as forensic imaging and legal botany. We only study these to a basic level, so please be patient with us."

"If you delve any deeper, those of us in remote sensing and botany might as well be out of a job," another botanist said, shaking his head.

"That won’t happen; we only dabble and that’s why we need everyone’s help," Jiang Yuan replied while clicking on the computer’s print command, which set the inkjet printer beside him whirring into action.

Sulei was somewhat restless. She stood up again, clicked her high heels across the floor, and came to the printer.

A sizable commercial printer, with a fixed asset tag on it, shone with the words "Jianjiang City, Shannan Province."

Sulei frowned slightly, feeling a sense of discomfort, but couldn’t pinpoint the specific issue.

"Is there a problem with this depression?" Sulei saw the image that had been zoomed in and labeled. She examined it closely; the labels were accurate. The vegetation pattern indeed resembled that of a place with a body and concluded, "New shrubs, look about four or five years old, should not be six years yet."

"Hmm, let’s dig it up and see, maybe it’s wrapped in something," Jiang Yuan walked over, standing a head taller than Sulei.

Utilizing Legal Botany, one can generally determine burial situations within a few years, and moreover, bodies that aren’t encased in coffins are especially more noticeable. Therefore, if the body is wrapped in straw mats or plastic sheets, the underground environment or condition will differ. As to exactly how it differs, forensic doctors have not yet fully understood.

The concept of a body farm has existed for a while, but there aren’t so many corpses to plague both domestic and international fields.

If other professions face a lack of research funding and personnel, forensic doctors face a lack of research materials, especially in recent years. Forensic researchers are almost keeping pace with those studying extraterrestrial beings—beginning to advance theory beyond practicality.

Sulei looked up at Jiang Yuan. To speak of age, Jiang Yuan was younger than her master’s degree students, but when it comes to the work he spoke about and did, even his current proficiency, it surpassed that of most botany scholars.

"Doctor Jiang seems to be working rather swiftly," Sulei commented.

Jiang Yuan smiled and said, "I arrived a bit earlier. In a while, once I’m done, I can help out everyone else."

"That would be great," Sulei said politely, then went back to her seat to work.

Later, an officer from the Cold Case Squad came, collected the printouts from Jiang Yuan’s hands, and organized a small team, including the entire canine unit, to head to the site for excavation.

A moment later, after Jiang Yuan printed several sheets of paper, he began to stroll around.

Sulei looked over in surprise and asked, "Just a moment then?"

"Yep, I’m turning in early. Is there anything I can help with?" Jiang Yuan asked politely.

Anyone listed by Pang Jidong and daring to accept the invitation to come was undoubtedly a prominent figure in the domestic botanical community. Jiang Yuan’s specialty in Legal Botany was just a branch of botany, with no cause for pride.

Sulei always found it incredible. Recalling her previous thoughts, she decided to test Jiang Yuan a bit and said, "I have a few plots here that raise questions. Could you take a look for me, Captain Jiang?"

Jiang Yuan nodded, came over to look, and quickly proposed solutions, "I think there shouldn’t be a problem, but if you’re worried, we could process the images further."

Saying this, he returned to his seat, clicked away at his keyboard, and soon sent the enhanced images back to Sulei.

Looking at the exceptionally clear images and the plots that were cleared of suspicion, Sulei couldn’t help falling into self-doubt.

To outsiders, Jiang Yuan appeared highly capable, like one of those expertly developed children from other families.

Only Sulei fit the description of someone else’s child, with ferocious academic prowess, skipping grades while taking exams, attending university entrance exams at fourteen, graduating from university at seventeen, then going abroad, acquiring a doctorate within five years, immediately working at a station, returning to her home country in two years to start at a junior faculty level, and in less than five years, leading her own team; within seven years of choosing a new direction and leading her students with vigor, she had already become one of the emerging bigwigs of the biological field.

It could be said that other botanists present might be very powerful in strength and ability, but because of their older age and comparatively ordinary resumes, they could not be categorized as geniuses within the upper echelons of academia.

Sulei was a true academic prodigy, brought up under full load, and she acknowledged that among her peers, others may surpass her achievements, after all, it’s also a matter of luck, but looking at Jiang Yuan, who was only in his twenties and a forensic doctor with substantial knowledge in botany, was really challenging Sulei’s worldviews.

Add to that high-level image enhancement technology...

"Thanks. Could you do a few more images for me?" Sulei made a direct request.

"Sure," Jiang Yuan replied. His work was already done, and he was ready to support the others now.

The images from C-line were also quite complex, which Sulei had specifically chosen. Although most images had already been processed by Jiang Yuan, allowing for smooth interpretation, Jiang Yuan’s previous limited time meant he could only give them a rough edit given the sheer volume of images.

The few images Sulei brought up were exceedingly complex in plant conditions while also possessing sufficient clarity. Although they could be researched and analyzed, the efficiency and effectiveness surely wouldn’t be great.

Jiang Yuan, without hesitation, sat down and began working swiftly. With Level 5 imaging processing technology, he was overwhelmingly effective against these normal drone aerial images.

Shortly after, Sulei received new images.

Compared to the previous ones, this new set of images was not only clearer but it was evident that the plants had been classified, meaning that he used prior knowledge of the types found in this area to use these sample types’ features to create a discriminative function, thereby categorizing the whole image.

To botanists, the value of such images needs no explanation. Sulei felt these were even more comfortable to work with than those she received from the national laboratory. The remote sensing experts over there wouldn’t process images to be this considerate.

Sulei silently made her assessment, and then just as quietly, she passed the new images to Jiang Yuan.

Jiang Yuan continued processing, just as swiftly as before.

Their back-and-forth collaboration significantly sped up the work progress.

Gradually, Sulei even began to feel a hint of guilt toward Jiang Yuan: that I perhaps slighted such a genius among geniuses because he was a forensic doctor is precisely the unfair treatment I once received. How did I suddenly become like this? It’s just not right...