1. A method operable on a processing device, having a processor and a memory, for improving the quality of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) image obtained from a MRI system, comprising: acquiring one or more test signals from a MRI system utilizing a test phantom object with known dimensions and characteristics; determining a compensation function C that minimizes an error metric that takes a baseline calibration signal from the MRI system and the one or more acquired test signals transformed by the compensation function C, the compensation function C calculated by the following expression: 
 C =argmin CK ( l,C,T ); where n test signals acquired with the test phantom object are denoted as T={t1, t2, t3,. .. , tn}, a baseline calibration signal based on the dimensions and characteristics of the test phantom object is denoted by I, and the error metric is denoted by K; determining a noise scale factor based on the plurality of acquired test signals by computing noise statistics in homogeneous areas where true signal intensities are substantially uniform in the one or more test signals; utilizing the acquired test signals, the calculated compensation function, and the noise scale factor as input parameters to calculate an image quality metric; acquiring a signal from a subject using the MRI system; reconstructing an MRI image of the MRI subject by maximizing the image quality metric; and displaying the reconstructed MRI image on a display.