Cavities and the architectures inside tablet play a decisive role for the permeation of water within tablet to initiate disintegration phenomenon. The present study aims to establish inner structure characterization methodology based on synchrotron radiation X-ray microcomputed tomography (SR-mu CT) for microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) tablets and to correlate the cavities and 'their attributes to tablet disintegration phenomenon. The three-dimensional (3D) morphological architecture and quantitative data of single particles for 12 specifications of MCC, and respective MCC tablets' cavities structure were obtained through advanced SR-mu CT studies. The image processing techniques were established to study the morphology of voids and porosity in an axial and radial direction based on the highly resolved 3D structure of tablets. The in-situ visualization of morphological disintegration behavior indicates that there were two patterns of disintegrations, which can be cataloged as laminating type (LT) and splitting type (ST) disintegrations. The principal component analysis (PCA) was used for multivariate data analysis to get the meaningful correlation among disintegration behaviors, cavities morphology, single particles attributes, and the cavities spatial arrangement within the tablets. These findings have deepened insights into inner structures of tablets and single particle structural attributes to tablet disintegration, reflecting the mechanism of disintegration mode, and the significance of pharmaceutical structure evaluated via SR-mu CT. (C) 2018 Published by Elsevier B.V.