Roentgen (unit) One roentgen deposits of absorbed dose in dry air, or in soft tissue. One roentgen of X-rays may deposit anywhere from in bone depending on the beam energy. This tissue-dependent conversion from kerma to absorbed dose is called the F-factor in radiotherapy contexts. The conversion depends on the ionizing energy of a reference medium, which is ambiguous in the latest NIST definition. The roentgen has its roots in the Villard unit defined in 1908 by the American Roentgen Ray Society as "the quantity of radiation which liberates by ionisation one esu of electricity per cm of air under normal conditions
Roentgen (unit) the SI. The US NIST clarified in 1998 that it was providing its own interpretations of the SI system, whereby it accepted the roentgen for use in the US with the SI, while recognizing that the CIPM did not. By then, the limitation to x and γ radiation had been dropped. NIST recommends defining the roentgen in every document where this unit is used. The continued use of the roentgen is strongly discouraged by the NIST. Whilst a convenient quantity to measure with an air ion chamber, the rontgen had the disadvantage that it was not a direct measure of