[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-the-nation-s-forensic-medical-examiner":3,"chapter-the-nation-s-forensic-medical-examiner-the-nation-s-forensic-medical-examiner-chapter-85":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"chinese","The Nation's Forensic Medical Examiner",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},2326780,4551,"Chapter 85: Core","the-nation-s-forensic-medical-examiner-chapter-85",85,"\u003Cp>The office fell silent again, like a self-study room where occasional displays of affection had briefly drawn everyone’s attention, but once the incident passed, people largely forgot about it.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The work before them was now the most important thing.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Jiang Yuan returned to his seat and continued screening fingerprints suitable for him.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He deliberately sought out blurry, low-quality fingerprints for comparison.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Because compared to ordinary trace evidence analysis, he could use “Image Enhancement Technology (LV3)” to process fingerprint images.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In fact, today’s automated fingerprint recognition systems also process images—operations like noise reduction, ridge segmentation, and ridge extraction are all completed automatically in the background, requiring little effort from trace analysts.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But at current technological levels, automated fingerprint recognition systems can never match the skill of expert human analysts.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Jiang Yuan immediately adopted a surveillance-style posture, processing the fingerprint image, and within moments selected a blurry picture resembling the bottom of a pot.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>His computer host thus stirred to life.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Whirrrrr…\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The host Jiang Yuan was using had decent specs—it was a new computer procured by the provincial bureau—but since being assigned to the trace analysis post, it had barely pushed its GPU or CPU in over two years.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>At Jiang Yuan’s request, its fans spun wildly, their noise sounding like a plea: Why am I so hot? I’m scared.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Jiang Yuan stood up, waved a pack of Zhonghua in the air beside him, and invited, “Want to step outside for a smoke?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Li Zemin, finding the machine too noisy and eager for a cigarette, immediately followed Jiang Yuan.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The two stepped out of the office, exchanged a cigarette each, and began puffing.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Jiang Yuan only ever smoked with his lips; most of the time he held the cigarette between his fingers, staring blankly ahead.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Li Zemin didn’t care—he finished one cigarette with a satisfied sigh, lit another, and asked, “Why’s your computer so loud?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Jiang Yuan replied, “I’m doing image processing. Is it too noisy?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Li Zemin understood a bit, glancing at Jiang Yuan: “If processing fingerprints makes this much noise, your technique must be pretty advanced.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Yeah, I can do image enhancement similar to surveillance video—trying it on fingerprint images to see if it works.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“If it works, they should give you a separate room—or at least a quiet spot for image processing,” Li Zemin mused. “You young people are impressive. We never had this when we learned fingerprints—it was exhausting. By the way, how far can your technique push image clarity?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Hard to say—it’ll make blurry images a bit clearer, but it’s targeted,” Jiang Yuan replied vaguely, since he hadn’t truly tested it himself.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Overall, applying image enhancement technology to fingerprints was like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Whether it was suitable, he himself couldn’t say for sure.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But one thing was clear: during this fingerprint battle, the dozens of fingerprint experts present were all competitors.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>When encountering a fingerprint, everyone first wondered: had another expert already examined it? Why hadn’t it matched? What was the reason it failed to match?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>If the failure was due to matching issues, no matter how well you extracted features, it wouldn’t matter.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>If the fingerprint was too incomplete, others couldn’t match it—and neither could you.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Precisely because of this, some fingerprint experts proposed the strategy for the fingerprint battle: “Don’t touch overly clear ones, don’t touch overly blurry ones, try the ones in between.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It sounds simple, almost like a circular tactic—but upon closer thought, it’s actually highly valuable.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In this setting, overly clear fingerprints aren’t worth processing. Neither are overly blurry ones.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Only the moderately blurred fingerprints are the focus of most experts. But consider how many experts are all fixated on these moderate ones—what was once a focus becomes a bottleneck.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Jiang Yuan’s ability to process moderately blurry images thus became uniquely valuable.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Back in the office, Jiang Yuan’s computer had stopped its roar; its fans spun weakly, like a special broker who’d just handled a hectic transaction, breathing hard just to prove it could still breathe, yet proud of the fruits of its labor.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Jiang Yuan looked at the fingerprint image on screen—many more discernible ridges and valleys now appeared.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Jiang Yuan nodded in satisfaction. Blurry images weren’t the problem—the lack of pixels was. If every pixel was artificially filled in, the forensic image became indistinguishable from fake.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Pot-bottom images were simpler: process the pixels you can, and the rest are usable.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Jiang Yuan carefully selected the most accurate image regions as anchors, extracted features, then ran the software.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>First attempt: 100 fingerprints—no match.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Second attempt: Jiang Yuan reselected features, reprocessed 200 fingerprints, and on the 47th, found a similar fingerprint.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Similar, not identical—because both fingerprints had been processed, few features aligned perfectly.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But this was the most common scenario in difficult fingerprints.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The reason was the same: if features matched easily, why would they be sent to the provincial bureau and end up in the fingerprint battle?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Here, automated computer judgment had receded to second place.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The core competitiveness of fingerprint experts has always been human judgment.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Today’s automated fingerprint recognition systems are fundamentally numerical systems—they don’t judge images; they assign values to images and make numerical assessments.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Simply put, these systems detect endpoints and bifurcations—they’re effective for most features, but they lack resolution for traditional ones like dots, hooks, short ridges, bridges, eyes, and broken lines.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Moreover, things like ridge flow or pattern type—concepts hard to define clearly—are beyond the system’s capability.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In this fingerprint battle environment, Jiang Yuan didn’t bother with computer-extracted features—he used the traditional Qingdao single-fingerprint analysis method to annotate, then right-clicked and selected “Confirm Match.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Ding dong.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In the office, a chorus of new message alerts rang out simultaneously.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Beside him, Li Zemin instinctively glanced at Jiang Yuan, who was slowly opening a fresh pack of Zhonghua.\u003C\u002Fp>",967,"2026-06-20T18:55:00.150Z",1,"Qwen3-Next 80B","3dfb85090a62fc41f798970777d8714a244032f156dcf447d9eac46895e8ffa0","the-nation-s-forensic-medical-examiner-chapter-86","the-nation-s-forensic-medical-examiner-chapter-84",1000,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fthe-nation-s-forensic-medical-examiner-cover.jpg"]