A method of transport through a folded dimension, untraceable by ordinary sensors and slowly fatal to its users, employed by the Ansata separatists of Rutia IV for their raids.
Dimensional shifting is a form of teleportation used by the Ansata, the separatist movement on Rutia IV, in the Next Generation episode The High Ground. A device called an inverter carries the traveller through another dimension, passing through force fields and leaving nothing for sensors to follow.
The Federation had studied the idea, known as the Elway Theorem, and abandoned it because each jump damages the body at the cellular level. The Ansata leader Kyril Finn kidnaps Beverly Crusher partly in the hope that she can treat his dying followers.
The Ansata use the inverter to board the Enterprise-D, plant a bomb on the warp core and seize Picard. Wesley Crusher, Data and La Forge find a way to trace the shifts, leading the Rutian police to the hidden base.