The initial propagation and shock acceleration of inhomogeneous compressible vortex rings is experimentally investigated in a vertical shock tube. Vortex rings are created by discharging gas (either \(\text {N}_{2}\) , Ar, CF4, or SF6) into ambient \(\text {N}_{2}\) from the open end of a small, upwards-firing shock tube mounted in the end wall of a large, downwards-firing shock tube. The initial development of the vortex rings across a broad range of ring formation parameters is investigated using high-speed planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) and particle image velocimetry (PIV). Ring formation conditions are controlled by varying the driver pressure ratio \(p_{4}/p_{1}\) , producing rings with circulation-based Reynolds numbers between \(1\times 10^{5}\) and \(3\times 10^{6}\) . The early-time growth of the rings is found to be strongly dependent on the Reynolds number and weakly dependent on the Atwood number. A subset of the ring formation parameters is selected for further investigation following shock acceleration by a \(M=2.05\) planar shock wave. Ring trajectories and the evolution of geometric parameters are compared to their pre-shock states. Ring circulation is found to increase significantly for the high-Atwood cases due to baroclinic deposition of vorticity, but is found to counterintuitively decrease for the low-Atwood cases. Vorticity deposition due to shock curvature effects around vortex cores is directly observed experimentally for the first time.