The diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB) has always been the key to control this pandemic. A fast, robust, specific, sensitive and affordable test for detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis is needed urgently. The laboratory diagnostics of tuberculosis has been developed and improved, such as FASTPlaque-TBTM Assay, Amplified Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Direct Test, AMPLICOR® MTB, AccuProbe，T-SPOT.TB and QuantiFeron-Gold test. Recently, a number of commercial diagnostic kits approved by World Health Organization (WHO) or U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have been used widely, such as BacT/Alert 3D and MGIT 960 systems which are based on liquid culture, the polymerase chainreaction (PCR)-based reverse hybridization line probe assay including INNO-LiPA Rif.TB, GenoType® MTBDRplus and GenoType® MTBDRsl systems, and simple and rapid immunochromatographic assay such as Capilia TB. They all have been used in clinic for diagnosis of tuberculosis. Even some newer technology, such as Xpert® MTB/RIF system and light emitting diode (LED) microscopy also have been promised for detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. These methods are reviewed in the present article.