Method for using infrared technology to detect tissue damage below the skin

Methodology for using infrared technology for detecting tissue damage below a patient's skin, comprising:

• using a smartphone equipped with infrared thermography to capture a plurality of time-spaced infrared thermography images of selected regions of the patient's skin, at predetermined frequency between image captures;
• recording the ambient temperatures at the selected regions at each time that the plurality of time-spaced infrared thermography images are captured;
• and
• processing the captured time-spaced infrared thermography images to create resulting data;
• wherein processing the captured time-spaced infrared thermography images includes
• removing background in the captured time-spaced infrared thermography images to eliminate any potential external interference with the analysis, to generate a white image on a black background;
• integrating a thermal image into the white image;
• imposing a predetermined grid pattern on the integrated thermal and white image and creating cells organized in rows and columns;
• averaging a temperature value in each cell on the integrated thermal and white image;
• and
• the methodology further includes uploading the processed captured time-spaced infrared thermography images and recorded ambient temperatures into a trained machine-learning model, wherein the machine-learning model is trained to assess the processed time-spaced infrared thermography images to detect changes over time to identify deviations in skin temperature of the patient, to detect tissue damage below the patient's skin based on identified skin temperature deviations, and to provide decision support in real-time to medical personnel regarding patient course of treatment,
• wherein the machine-learning model is trained to perform analysis to detect and identify at least one of tissue damage in diabetic patients, melanoma, necrotic colitis in pre-term infants, and any other condition where a temperature change occurs due to an inflammatory response or other type of response.