Maximum a posteriori probability estimates in infinite-dimensional Bayesian inverse problems

Abstract

A demanding challenge in Bayesian inversion is to efficiently characterize the posterior distribution. This task is problematic especially in high-dimensional non-Gaussian problems, where the structure of the posterior can be very chaotic and difficult to analyse. Current inverse problem literature often approaches the problem by considering suitable point estimators for the task. Typically the choice is made between the maximum a posteriori (MAP) or the conditional mean (CM) estimate. The benefits of either choice are not well-understood from the perspective of infinite-dimensional theory. Most importantly, there exists no general scheme regarding how to connect the topological description of a MAP estimate to a variational problem. The results by Dashti et. al. (2013) resolve this issue for non-linear inverse problems in Gaussian framework. In this work we improve the current understanding by introducing a novel concept called the weak MAP (wMAP) estimate. We show that any MAP estimate in the sense of Dashti et. al. (2013) is a wMAP estimate and, moreover, how in general infinite-dimensional non-Gaussian problems the wMAP estimate connects to a variational formulation. Such a formulation yields many properties of the estimate that were earlier impossible to study. In a recent work by Burger and Lucka (2014) the MAP estimator was studied in the context of Bayes cost method. Using Bregman distances, proper convex Bayes cost functions were introduced for which the MAP estimator is the Bayes estimator. Here, we generalize these results to the infinite-dimensional setting. Moreover, we discuss the implications of our results for some examples of prior models such as the Besov prior and hierarchical prior.