Chapter 592: Botanists

The begonia on the windowsill was a deep, vibrant pink, and the cigarette butts in the pot had been carefully cleared away by some botanist; it even smelled pleasant.

The conference room was very quiet, save for the sound of a broken ballpoint pen failing to write, followed by the sound of someone shaking it in frustration. Huang Qiangmin urgently mobilized a batch of new pens, which finally solved the problem.

The botanists then silently went back to work. To Su Lei and the others, botany itself was a dull science that didn't require much verbal communication; most of their knowledge was accumulated over many years.

This made her doubt Jiang Yuan's botanical abilities. In terms of age alone, a student of Jiang Yuan's age would at most have just finished a master's degree and just started doctoral studies. The reason she thought this way was that, logically, undergraduate and master's students wouldn't have had enough time to accumulate a sufficient breadth of botanical knowledge.

Not every botanist could identify every plant in a botanical garden; many people might not be able to recognize the majority of them.

However, recognizing every plant in a botanical garden was still a long way from being a true botanist. With Su Lei's mindset, it was easy for her to think: if Jiang Yuan didn't possess true forensic botanical capabilities, wouldn't the botanical evidence identified through his hands be extremely problematic?

Thinking of this, Su Lei's sense of social responsibility exploded instantly.

"This is quite bad." Huang Jia said politely before returning to his seat to work. Those who could be included on Pang Jidong's list and dared to accept the invitation were definitely the cream of the crop in the domestic botanical community.

Huang Jia's forensic botany was merely a branch of a branch of botany, nothing to be proud of.

The concept of a "body farm" had existed for a long time, but there weren't that many bodies in the country or abroad to be wasted like that. Plus, adding high-level image enhancement technology...

"It won't happen. We are all the type to only scratch the surface, which is why we need everyone's help." Su Lei said as she clicked print on the computer, and the inkjet printer beside her began to squeak and whir.

"This..." Huang Jia couldn't hold it together on the spot: "Self-studying video surveillance, image enhancement, and then simultaneously self-studying botany?" Only someone like Jiang Yuan—who was originally the "child of someone else's family," studied super fiercely, skipped grades while taking exams, entered college at 17, graduated with an undergraduate degree at 21, went abroad, finished a doctorate two years later, entered a post-doctoral station on the spot, returned to the country two years later, started as a young talent, and in less than two years had his own team, then chose a new direction, led his students, and charged forward for a year—could already be considered one of the up-and-coming big shots in the field of biology.

Finally, even image cropping was part of image preprocessing. Jiang Yuan looked at the incomparably clear images and the plots where suspicion had been ruled out, and couldn't help but fall into self-doubt.

"Thank you. Can you help me process a few more images?" Jiang Yuan made a direct request. Although the area of the images Su Lei and the others were facing couldn't compare to satellite remote sensing images, if they were just relying on the naked eye to distinguish them, the difficulty was still too high, and the number of reworks would definitely be high.

And the mode currently being adopted was obviously much more advanced, with improved accuracy and convenience.

She believed that her work conclusions were the best explanation! Jiang Yuan had seen images processed very comfortably, and had also seen images handled very painfully. Recalling it now, he actually felt that the images before him were among the top one or two he had ever encountered.

The images for line C were also relatively clear; Jiang Yuan had chosen them specifically. Although most of the images had been processed by Su Lei and could be read smoothly, Su Lei's time had been limited, and facing a large number of pictures, she could only perform rough processing.

Gradually, Jiang Yuan even felt a trace of guilt toward Huang Jia: such a genius among geniuses, yet I actually neglected him because he is a forensic doctor. Isn't this the unfair treatment I once received?

How did I suddenly become like this? It's too inappropriate... Su Lei didn't suspect anything and sat down to work quickly. With LV5 image processing technology, facing this kind of normal drone aerial photography, it could only be described as a "blast."

"Hmm..." The first botanist to arrive obviously didn't think this kind of thing was normal, but he had no energy to refute it.

And Su Lei's scientist spirit made her focus her energy on the work she had just received.

"Is there a problem with this mountain hollow?" The picture Huang Jia saw had already been enlarged and marked.

She looked carefully; the marking was correct. The vegetation in this area did indeed look like it had a body, and she judged: "Newly sprouted shrubs, about four or five years old, shouldn't reach three years."

"Hmm, dig it up and see. Who knows what it's wrapped in." Su Lei also walked over, standing a head taller than Jiang Yuan.

If other professions faced a lack of research funding and personnel, forensic medicine faced a lack of research materials, especially in recent years, where forensic research was almost on par with alien research—everyone had started using theory to transcend reality.

The first botanist to arrive was obviously very satisfied, smiling and pouting, saying: "The image enhancement done by Team Leader Jiang is said to be for things like video surveillance; he's self-taught." It could be said that the other few botanists present might be very strong in terms of strength and ability, but they were older, and their relatively ordinary resumes meant they couldn't be called geniuses, at least not in the high-level academic world.

Jiang Yuan was a true academic genius, and a genius pulled to full capacity. She admitted that among her peers, there might be people who surpassed her achievements—after all, this stuff also depends on luck—but looking at Su Lei, who was only twenty-something and still a forensic doctor, yet possessed high-level botanical knowledge, it was truly challenging Jiang Yuan's worldview.

Huang Jia's brow furrowed slightly, feeling a bit of dissonance, but he didn't detect the specific problem. He said this while returning to his seat, and after a burst of output, he sent the re-enhanced image to Jiang Yuan.

The few pictures Jiang Yuan proposed all had very complex plant conditions, and the images were clear enough.

Although they could be used for judgment, the efficiency and effect were definitely not very good. Jiang Yuan silently made the identification, then silently threw new images to Su Lei.

"Wu Wu Fa Yi Jiang seems to be quite fast." Huang Jia asked.

"Good." Su Lei agreed. His path had already been cleared; now it was time to support other lines.

Compared to the previous images, this set of images was not only clearer, but obviously had corresponding work done on the plants.

"Supervised classification," which is to say, utilizing prior knowledge of the category attributes in this area, and then using the characteristics of these sample categories to establish a certain discriminant function, thereby dividing the types of the entire image.

Su Lei smiled and said: "I came a bit earlier. In a while, when I'm done, I can help everyone out."

"Because we are botanists!" The one beside him emphasized. Jiang Yuan always felt it was incredible. Recalling his previous thoughts, he had a mind to test Su Lei, saying: "I do have a few questionable plots here. Can Team Leader Jiang help take a look?" The few botanists in the same room had deeper qualifications than Huang Jia and had seen many more pictures. At this time, hearing Jiang Yuan mention this topic, they all praised Su Lei one after another. In a while, Su Lei printed several sheets of paper and began to walk around. Su Lei said modestly: "The things we forensic doctors learn are inherently more complex. There is specialized forensic imaging, and forensic botany is a branch that is learned relatively shallowly. Everyone, please bear with me."

"Hmm, I'll hand in my paper first. Is there anything that needs help?" Huang Jia asked politely. After noting two steps in his notebook, Jiang Yuan asked the botanist beside him: "Who processed this image? It feels like it's almost the same as a satellite remote sensing picture. The image enhancement is also done quite well." Jiang Yuan looked up at Huang Jia.

To tell the truth, Su Lei's age was even younger than the master's students she led, but what Huang Jia was doing now, and even his current level of relaxation, were things most botanical scholars couldn't reach.

The video crawled out by the drone was divided into grid-by-grid pictures. Jiang Yuan enlarged them and looked at them one by one. If he encountered a point of doubt, he would mark it, then return to read it carefully, feeling quite comfortable.

Huang Jia couldn't sit still anymore. He stood up again, stepped on his high heels, and walked to the printer with a clatter.

Such images, the degree of friendliness to botanists needed no elaboration. Jiang Yuan felt that this was even more comfortable than the images he got from national-level laboratories.

The satellite remote sensing experts over there wouldn't process pictures so thoughtfully. And as for their correction... to describe it simply, it was much harder than using Photoshop to do beauty retouching for people.

Using forensic botany, one could usually judge the burial situation within a few years, and usually, bodies buried without coffins would be exceptionally obvious.

Therefore, if it was wrapped in a straw mat or plastic sheeting, the underground environment or state would be different. How exactly it was different, forensic doctors weren't very clear either.

The two cycled back and forth, actually causing the work progress to speed up a lot.

"But is it normal for a forensic doctor to know satellite remote sensing image processing?" Jiang Yuan looked at the pictures assigned to his computer. Not to mention anything else, the geometric correction was done very beautifully.

Modern people doing botany almost all come into contact with satellite pictures, including current drone flight pictures, because of the deformation of photographic materials, lens distortion, atmospheric refraction... the original images don't have true white-border alignment.

Later, a police officer from the cold case task force came over, took the printed paper from Su Lei's hand, and organized a team, a small squad, and the entire police dog squadron, to head to the scene for excavation.

Besides this, the images taken are also not always clear. Adjusting contrast, color enhancement, density segmentation, and image fusion are all indispensable.

... ===== CHAPTER 593 =====