Based on X-ray fast imaging beamline (BL16U2) at Shanghai synchrotron radiation facility and a home-made material test system, an in situ micro-CT system was set up to study the 3D structural deformation and failure process of an aluminum syntactic foam doped with hollow microbeads under quasi-static uniaxial compression. The bulk engineering stress-engineering strain curve of the specimen under quasi-static compression and the 3D structural models under the specified strain states are obtained by the in situ micro-CT system. Based on 3D digital image analysis methods, the evolution of pore morphology parameters and the collapse process of cells are quantified. In the pre-collapse stage, a small number of hollow microbeads are broken, and it's not exactly an elastic deformation. After entering the plateau stage, a large number of hollow microbeads in the matrix are destroyed, and a deformation concentration zone is formed. The strain continues to increase while the stress remains stable until most of the cells break and collapse, and fragments fill in the gaps after cell collapse, and the whole specimen gradually densifies. Tracking the collapse of several cells, the cells with higher sphericity have stronger compressive resistance, and the cells with the longest axis perpendicular to the loading direction are the most easily destroyed. The cell with dense small pores around it breaks first and induces the adjacent cell collapse.