A selective molecularly imprinted solid-phase extraction procedure was developed for the selective separation of tanshinone I, tanshinone IIA, and cryptotanshinone from radix salvia miltiorrhiza samples. Tanshinone IIA imprinted polymers (MIPs) synthesized in ethanol-dodecanol system show high affinity to tanshinone IIA and its structure analogs in aqueous environment and the affinity can be controlled by adjusting the intensity of the eluents. By using water-methanol (60:40 %, v/v) and methanol-trifluoroacetic acid (99.5:0.5 %, v/v) as washing and eluting solvents, most interferences originating from the salvia matrix were eliminated. The extracts were sufficiently clean to be directly injected into HPLC for further chromatographic analysis. Good linearity was obtained from 0.4 to 500 mg/L (r2=0.999) with the relative standard deviations less than 4.2 %. The mean recoveries of tanshinone IIA in radix salvia miltiorrhiza were more than 85.6 % at three different concentrations and the limits of detection were 0.06~0.09 mg/L. This method is a viable alternative tool to the existing HPLC methods for analyzing the content of the three tanshinones in radix salvia miltiorrhiza samples.