AbstractPurposeTo investigate the effectiveness of slab‐selective inversion in pulsed arterial spin labeling with body coil excitation as a means to reduce large vessel contamination of the perfusion signal.Materials and MethodsStudies were conducted by varying the tagging width in multislice flow‐sensitive alternating inversion recovery (FAIR) in conjunction with body coil excitation on a Siemens Sonata whole‐body 1.5‐T scanner. The results of spatially‐confined tagging were then compared with conventional nonselective tagging in the presence and absence of a bipolar gradient crusher pair in order to determine the effectiveness of suppressing vascular signal and to estimate the bolus width that reaches the capillary bed.ResultsIt is shown in five volunteers, ages 23–38 years, that depending on the average velocity of the arterial blood flow in the tagging region, a bolus of 6–8 cm in width reaches the capillary bed at a fixed inversion time TI of 1.4 seconds, while a bolus of 11.2–16.5 cm in width enters the imaging region. Further, noticeable velocity differences have been found among the participating subjects, with averages ranging from 10.1 to 13.9 cm/second.ConclusionThe data suggest that it is advantageous to replace nonselective global tagging in FAIR perfusion imaging with body coil excitation by spatially‐confined tagging to reduce undesired residual tagged blood in large vessels. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2005;22:119–124. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.