  We formulate the expansion for the mass of the nucleon as a function of pion
mass within chiral perturbation theory using a number of different ultra-violet
regularisation schemes; including dimensional regularisation and various
finite-ranged regulators. Leading and next-to-leading order non-analytic
contributions are included through the standard one-loop Feynman graphs. In
addition to the physical nucleon mass, the expansion is constrained by recent,
extremely accurate, lattice QCD data obtained with two flavors of dynamical
quarks. The extent to which different regulators can describe the chiral
expansion is examined, while varying the range of quark mass over which the
expansions are matched. Renormalised chiral expansion parameters are recovered
from each regularisation prescription and compared. We find that the
finite-range regulators produce consistent, model-independent results over a
wide range of quark mass sufficient to solve the chiral extrapolation problem
in lattice QCD.
