Hulk #3: A Medical Review
Hulk #3 “Creatures on the Loose”
Jeph Loeb, writer
Ed McGuinness, penciler
The retina is an extremely important part of the human body — it makes up the inside back of the eyeball and it’s what gives us the sense of sight. The retina has a variety of specialized photoreceptor cells that are capable of transforming light into nerve impulses. These impulses are transmitted to the optic areas of the brain and allow us to see. Each retina has a unique pattern of blood vessels. This uniqueness is what allows retinal scans to be used as a method of biometric identification.
Getting a good look at the retina is tricky — just ask any medical student.
1. Turn off all light sources but the ophthalmoscope, and keep that at its narrowest setting. You want the pupil to be as dilated as possible.
A wide light beam and a sunny desert day are not effective ways to get a good retinal scan.
2. Get right up to the patient and look through the ophthalmoscope and through their pupil at the retina. To get a good view of the retina you need to be right in front of the patient and as close as possible.
A scan from the side would only allow the viewing of a small slice of the outer edge of the retina, if that. With the lens of the eye involved, the optics can be tricky, so a short viewing distance is necessary: millimeters away, not inches.
Assuming a good retinal scan is acquired, that bring up an entirely different issue: the reliability of the scan itself. Retinal scanning the Hulk certainly seems to work in this comic, but I’m suspicious that it shouldn’t. When unnamed person changes into the Red Hulk, does their retina stay the same? The Hulk’s eyes, and thus his retinas, are much larger. They are going to need additional blood supply, so he’s either going to have to grow new retinal blood vessels, or increase the size of the ones already there (look at the profusion of bulging blood vessels that appear elsewhere on the Hulk’s body) Either of these is going to throw off the retinal scan algorithm.
I’ll grant that the retinal scan is a moderately clever way for Loeb to tease readers about the identity of the new Hulk, but the concept — and the way it’s illustrated — just wouldn’t work in this situation.
April 28th, 2008 at 10:24 am
Perhaps Loeb addresses this, but for a retinal scan to produce any identification results at all, wouldn’t it need to have a database of existing retinal scans to compare against? Or is the mere fact that the scanner *does* manage to confirm an ID supposed to suggest that the new Hulk is someone whose retinal scans would already be on file?
April 28th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Official Comment
Loeb is suggesting that the Hulk’s retinal scan matches the scan of someone who’s already in the database.
April 28th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
So, the question is: why not simply show Hulk’s profile and the retinal scanner in front of him? Even if it were closer than millimeters away, it’s be nearer to reality (and logic).
April 28th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
GRRRR…
April 28th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Scott, his eyes are glowing; I’m pretty sure they’re just checking the make of the bulb.
April 28th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Hulk Smash puny logic!
April 28th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
The structure of the iris of the eye is also unique, making it a better candidate for biometric recognition in many ways — the subject can be scanned at a distance, for example. (The scanners in Minority Report were iris scanners, which is how they could recognize subjects passing nearby.) As long as Red Hulk stood still enough, for just a moment, a successful iris scan would be reasonable even without S.H.I.E.L.D.-level technology.
I’m guessing Loeb intended the scan pictured above to be a retinal scan, but I just looked over the issue again, and it doesn’t specifically say.
April 28th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Official Comment
I thought about Iris Scans as well when I was writing the post, but I decided it was a retinal scan because if you trace the light beam (hard to do on my scanned-in-picture), it matches the pupils exactly.
An iris scan still brings up my other concern: would changing into the Hulk change the iris enough to make the scan no longer match. Clearly pigment alterations are part and parcel of turning into the Hulk…
April 28th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
Of course it really depends on the details of the “bulking-up” process that occurs during the transformation, but I would argue yes. The structures of the body seem maintain their essential shape, even though they become enlarged.
Parts of the body, particularly muscles, get distorted by this growth. But the eyes probably remain essentially round, evidenced by the fact that Hulk can still see. So I think whatever process occurs that adds cells to the body’s structure would most likely build the same iris, only bigger. The recognition software could easily deal with a different sized iris, and probably even deal with some distortion — according to what I’ve read, iris structures are different even between genetically identical monozygotic twins.
April 29th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
If Hulking out just makes you bigger, and oddly pigmented, then an iris or retinal scanner that just looked for topographic features without regard to scale could work. Of course in real life I’d think if you grew that much you’d need additional blood vessels, but in real life gamma rays and mass are different too.
Leave a Reply
Contact Me
About
Subscribe:
The Best Of...
Special Topics
Archives
Categories
Twitter
See Also
Comic Blogs
Medical/Science Blogs
Currently Reading
Arbitrarily Interesting Medical Condition
Syndrome
The Net:
Contents may have settled during shipping. Past results are no guarantee of future performance. No animals were harmed during the production of this product. Void where prohibited by law. All rights reserved. Not valid with other offers or specials. Professional driver on a closed track. Your financial institution may impose other fees. All models are over 18 years of age. Employees must wash hands before returning to work. Results not typical. Many suitcases look alike. 18% gratuity added to tables of six or more.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
© 2004-2012 Polite Dissent. Powered by WordPress