An NMR system performs in vivo localized NMR spectroscopy. A two-dimensional selective RF excitation pulse is used to localize to a cylindrical region of interest, and either phase encoding or slice selective inversion is used to localize to a disk in the cylindrical region of interest. The two-dimensional selective RF excitation is performed in a series of pulse sequences rather than a single pulse sequence, and the resulting series of acquired NMR signals are summed together to substantially cancel signal conributions from outside the cylindrical region of interest.