It has been found that fully enclosed microcavities can be engineered within Al2O3 ceramics using 125 mu m diameter Ti wires as templates. A high-energy milling pretreatment of the alumina causes diffusion of the Ti into the surrounding alumina leaving all of the Kirkendall porosity consolidated into a central cavity. Control experiments using unmilled alumina confirm the necessity of the milling procedure and experiments with different milling media have excluded incidental doping by milling induced contamination as a primary driver of cavity formation. The internal microcavities produced here may lead to new applications in small scale instrumentation and implantable therapeutic devices.