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Thus far, blood flow velocity measurements with MRI have only been feasible in large cerebral blood vessels. High‐field‐strength MRI may now permit velocity measurements in much smaller arteries. The aim of this proof of principle study was to measure the blood flow velocity and pulsatility of cerebral perforating arteries with 7‐T MRI. A two‐dimensional (2D), single‐slice quantitative flow (Qflow) sequence was used to measure blood flow velocities during the cardiac cycle in perforating arteries in the basal ganglia (BG) and semioval centre (CSO), from which a mean normalised pulsatility index (PI) per region was calculated (n = 6 human subjects, aged 23–29 years). The precision of the measurements was determined by repeated imaging and performance of a Bland–Altman analysis, and confounding effects of partial volume and noise on the measurements were simulated. The median number of arteries …