A Beijing forensic lab, known as a municipal judicial expertise center, has been named as one of the top 10 such institutions nationwide.

The Technical Appraisal Institute of Forensic Science affiliated to China University of Political Science and Law was picked as one of the best 10 national judicial expertise centers on Monday along with four other judicial expertise agencies in the capital.

The top 10 were picked from thousands of judicial expertise centers nationwide. Judges selecting the best of the best included experts from the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate and the Ministry of Public Security. The institute offers its forensic services to the public, judicial authorities, arbitration agencies and law firms and legal representatives.

"As the government strives to build a state that is ruled by law, judicial expertise plays a key role in ensuring the smooth process of judicial activities and the resolution of conflicts," said Yu Hongyuan, director of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice. The bureau supervises all of the appraisal agencies in the city.

Beijing now has 113 judicial expertise agencies with 1,631 judicial authentication centers. The 15 appraisal categories include forensic science, material evidence and audio and video materials as well as intellectual property rights.

Appraisals are usually commissioned by the courts during the litigation process.

The appraisal institute at the university said appraisals of body injuries, the degrees of a disability and medical disputes ranked top in its work and accounted for about 40 percent of annual appraisals.

More than 30 pieces of equipment are in place at the center to facilitate the checking of eyesight, hearing, nerves and male sexual function.

Experts in the document examination laboratory are even able to determine such details as the time when documents were printed.

"Document examination not only distinguishes whether a signature or seal is true or not, it can also display the process of the document formation and thus leaves no chance for the producers of fakes to get away with it," said Liu Jianwei, chief expert in the document examination lab at the institute.

The most familiar appraisal likely to be called upon by members of the public is paternity testing.

"Paternity testing, or DNA testing, has the least deviation among all the appraisal techniques and makes no difference from one appraisal agency to another," said Ma Kai, a worker at the bureau. "Citizens are not advised to rush to the institute to ask for tests because most of our work will be commissioned by the municipal courts."