Pulmonary perfusion imaging using ASL has been demonstrated using the pCASL technique with varying degrees of reproducibility. In this study, a pCASL labeling strategy is proposed to improve the stability of perfusion signal in the lungs using cardiac triggering to reduce flow-induced signal variations, and background suppression to improve SNR. With the proposed technique, high SNR perfusion images are created with a limited number of signal averages. This optimized approach may allow full coverage of the lungs in clinically reasonable scan times.