Mariola Ropacka-Lesiak Award

Awarded by International Society of Placenta Accreta Spectrum (IS-PAS) in 2025 for significant research contributions towards the diagnosis and morbidity risk assessment in placenta accreta spectrum

Theophilus Adu-Bredu is a researcher whose work bridges clinical ultrasound, artificial intelligence, and global maternal health.

He completed his BSc in Sonography at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana, in 2016, and earned an MSc in Medical Ultrasound with Distinction from the University of Derby in 2020. He completed his PhD in 2025 at the University of Portsmouth, based on research under the supervision of Prof Sally Collins (Oxford), focusing on the utility of ultrasound in predicting surgical complications in subsequent pregnancies following a previous caesarean section.

Before moving to Oxford, Theophilus worked within the Obstetrics and Gynaecology Directorate at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH), Ghana’s second-largest tertiary hospital, where he was a founding member of the Maternal Fetal Medicine Unit. There, he provided advanced fetal ultrasound services for high-risk pregnancies and contributed to fellowship training and radiology resident education.

He continues to support fetal medicine case discussions and multidisciplinary meetings in Ghana’s two largest tertiary hospitals (KATH and Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital) through telemedicine.

His research is centred on placenta-related disorders in pregnancy, using a combination of ultrasound, clinical data, and advanced data-analytical approaches to improve diagnosis, risk stratification, and outcomes. His work particularly focuses on the integration of imaging biomarkers and computational tools for conditions such as preeclampsia, fetal growth restriction, and placenta accreta spectrum (PAS) in both high- and low-resource settings.

He has authored publications in leading journals and has serves as a reviewer for many top ranking journals.

Theophilus currently contributes to pioneering research at Oxford, including the OxPLUS project led by Professor Sally Collins, which investigates 3D placental volume and Doppler for early prediction of adverse pregnancy outcomes, and collaborates with Professor Aris Papageorghiou on developing AI tools for the detection of congenital heart disease.

His overarching goal is to advance equitable maternal health globally through the fusion of advanced imaging, data science, through discovery based research and clinical translation.