In evaluating the biological damage that radiation can produce, it is observed that identical doses of different types of radiation can produce differing levels of damage. In the field of radiation protection, biologically equivalent doses are set equal to one another by multiplying the actual absorbed dose by a number called the quality factor. The resulting quantity is called DOSE equivalent, measured in sieverts or rems.
In radiation science, a coefficient used to convert the absorbed dose of radiation (measured in grays or rads) to the toxic dose (in rems).
A numerical factor that establishes the correlation between the biological harm caused by a specific type of radiation and an equivalent dose of x-radiation. For instance, neutron radiation with a dose of one rad is considered 10 times more biologically detrimental than one rad of x-rays.