Value Representation

SH Short String

Category
string
Max Length
16 chars
Fixed Length
No
Source
PS3.5 §6.2

Definition

A character string that may be padded with leading or trailing spaces. The character code 05CH (the BACKSLASH "\" in ISO-IR 6) shall not be present, as it is used as the delimiter between values for multiple data elements.

Attributes using SH

126 DICOM attributes declare this VR. Showing the first 24.

Working with SH in integration code

VR-aware transformations are where most DICOM integration bugs hide — truncating a PN's 5-component structure, misaligning OB padding, or dropping leading zeros on IS. Saga IT builds production DICOM pipelines that respect VR semantics across Mirth Connect transformers, DIMSE gateways, and cloud DICOM services.