Black-blood preparation is a tool for improved contrast generation in cardiovascular MRI to assess vessel wall constitution, to delineate plaques and to characterize myocardial tissue. For example, the efficient suppression of the vascular blood signal is important in imaging studies of the vessel wall as high signal intensities from inflowing blood can obscure the subtle signal variations in the different layers of the blood vessel. Conventionally, black-blood MRI can be done with dual inversion recovery pulses [1] so that selective signal nulling of the inflowing blood is achieved. The inversion delays required to establish the black-blood contrast can be favorably integrated into ECG-triggered diastolic cardiac measurements, but they are by far too time-consuming for dynamic measurements that cover the total cardiac cycle. In this work we investigate the use of conventional saturation pulses for black-blood imaging. We propose a very time-efficient pulse implementation that combines the saturation and the imaging RF pulse into a single pulse structure and enables black-blood contrast in dynamic measurements.A combined RF pulse shape (cf. Fig. 1) is defined as a superposition of the saturation and imaging pulse in complex domain. Both pulses follow a sin(x)/x-shaped amplitude pattern modulated with a Hann window. The shift of the saturation slab relatively to the imaging slice by a distance Δz is realized by a linear phase modulation exp(-2πiγG_zΔz) of the saturation pulse (G_z: slice selection gradient). To prevent refocusing of the excited signal within the saturation slab, the saturation pulse is temporally shifted by Δt relatively to the imaging pulse. This introduces a dephasing moment that reduces the net transverse magnetization in the saturation slab. The combined pulse was implemented in a FLASH sequence, and measurements were performed on a 3T system (Siemens Prisma). The saturation-excitation pulse scheme was tested in vivo in two volunteer experiments in the descending aorta in a single breath-hold and in the carotids during free-breathing. Images were acquired using ECG-triggered golden-angle radial sampling with the following parameters: TE/TR: 4.8/9.1ms, slice thickness: 8mm, saturation slab thickness: 50mm, matrix: 192x192, FoV: 235x235mm², bandwidth: 400Hz/px. The parameters of the combined pulse were set to: pulse duration T_Pulse: 4ms, Δt = 1.2ms, α_img/α_sat: 10°/30°, Δz = 69mm. After image reconstruction, the efficiency of the black blood preparation was evaluated by calculating the ratio of the mean signal intensity in the blood vessel over the mean of the noise (i.e., the SNR of the vessel lumen). Note, that with this definition the ideal suppression would yield a ratio of 1.The ECG-triggered radial images in Fig. 2a show the efficiency of blood suppression in the descending aorta for different time frames over the cardiac cycle. Suppression is nearly ideal during systole and at end-diastole, whereas some remaining blood signal is visible (maximum luminal SNR = 1.6) during early diastole (Fig. 2b). In the neck, arterial and venous suppression measurements were done separately (Fig. 3). The difference images (Fig. 3c) clearly show the arterial (white) and venous (black) structures. Again, blood suppression was very efficient with a maximum arterial/venous SNR in the vessel lumen of 2.8/4.0. Maximum values are seen at the very beginning of the cardiac cycle whereas the SNR is well below 2 during end-systole and diastole. This could be explained by a relatively long acquisition pause of about 100 ms in end-diastole in combination with slow flow velocities in this phase of the cardiac cycle leading to non-saturated spins entering the imaging slice at the beginning of the acquisition in each heartbeat.The proposed single pulse structure for saturation and imaging offers very time-efficient blood suppression and enables continuous data acquisition with spoiled steady state sequences. The quasi simultaneous saturation and excitation scheme could be successfully demonstrated for two different scenarios and will be further investigated in cardiac applications. For example, the use of retrospective gating would increase blood signal nulling at the beginning of the cardiac cycle. A limitation of the method is that imaging and saturation slices are intrinsically orientated in parallel. However, in cross-sectional imaging of blood vessels this slice layout is very efficient for blood saturation. As this method enables short TR times, saturation can be achieved with flip angles well below 90°, because the inflowing blood experiences multiple excitations within the saturation slab even at higher flow velocities. Thus, the method could be beneficial to reduce the SAR over conventional 90°-saturation pulses, which is important in high-field MRI. The proposed method renders similarities to the BASS method [2], however, it provides an even more time-efficient implementation.