The invention discloses a method for synthesizing alpha-amino ketone from ketone and imine, and belongs to the technical field of chemical organic synthesis. The method comprises the following steps: adding imine into an organic solvent, sufficiently dissolving so as to obtain an imine solution, further respectively adding ketone, a catalyst tetrabutyl ammonium iodide and an oxidant tert-butyl hydroperoxide into the solution, sealing up a tube opening, heating to be 130 DEG C, stirring for 3 hours, cooling down the system to be the room temperature after the reaction is ended, extracting by using dichloromethane and removing the solvent of on organic phase so as to obtain alpha-amino ketone. By adopting the method, defects in the conventional method for synthesizing alpha-amino ketone by electrophilic amination and nucleophilic amination are overcome, direct amination of alpha-position of a simple ketone compound such as acetone is achieved, a C-N bond is generated through oxidative coupling reaction between a N-H bond and a C-H bond at one step, and the alpha-position of a ketone substrate does not need to be prefunctionalized, so that the experiment steps are simple, the condition is gentle, the reagents are cheap, and the range of the substrate is wide; the method is applicable to industrial production.