The bias/variance trade-off when estimating the MR signal magnitude from the complex average of repeated measurements

The signal‐dependent bias of MR images has been considered a hindrance to visual interpretation almost since the beginning of clinical MRI. Over time, a variety of procedures have been suggested to produce less‐biased images from the complex average of repeated measurements. In this work, we re‐eval...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Magnetic resonance in medicine 2011-11, Vol.66 (5), p.1456-1467
Main Authors: Tisdall, M. Dylan, Lockhart, Richard A., Atkins, M. Stella
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bayes Theorem
Bias
Computers
denoising
image bias
Likelihood Functions
Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods
Mathematics
maximum likelihood estimate
nuisance parameters
Signal-To-Noise Ratio
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Summary:The signal‐dependent bias of MR images has been considered a hindrance to visual interpretation almost since the beginning of clinical MRI. Over time, a variety of procedures have been suggested to produce less‐biased images from the complex average of repeated measurements. In this work, we re‐evaluate these approaches using first a survey of previous estimators in the MRI literature, then a survey of the methods statisticians employ for our specific problem. Our conclusions are substantially different from much of the previous work: first, removing bias completely is impossible if we demand the estimator have bounded variance; second, reducing bias may not be beneficial to image quality. Magn Reson Med, 2011. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
ISSN:0740-3194
1522-2594
DOI:10.1002/mrm.22910