1. A method for reducing localized artifacts in imaging data, the method comprising: segmenting the imaging data to identify one or more suspect regions in the imaging data near which localized artifacts are expected to occur; defining an artifact-containing region of interest in the imaging data around each suspect region; defining one or more classes for the imaging data of the artifact-containing regions of interest, and associating each class with at least one representative imaging value; assigning each item of imaging data within the artifact-containing regions to one of the classes; determining local bias field within the artifact-containing regions describing, for each item of imaging data within the artifact-containing regions, a difference between a calculated imaging value and the representative imaging value based on the classification; and applying the local bias field to the imaging data within the artifact-containing regions to produce art artifact-corrected imaging data.