N3 Bias Field Correction Explained as a Bayesian Modeling Method

Although N3 is perhaps the most widely used method for MRI bias field correction, its underlying mechanism is in fact not well understood. Specifically, the method relies on a relatively heuristic recipe of alternating iterative steps that does not optimize any particular objective function. In this paper we explain the successful bias field correction properties of N3 by showing that it implicitly uses the same generative models and computational strategies as expectation maximization (EM) based bias field correction methods. We demonstrate experimentally that purely EM-based methods are capable of producing bias field correction results comparable to those of N3 in less computation time.