The epidemic of tuberculosis worldwide urgently requires quick and effective diagnostic method. However for a long time, the diagnosis of tuberculosis has been relying on the traditional acid-fast staining of smears and selective Mycobacterium tuberculosis culture techniques, which cannot meet the need for rapid diagnosis. To match this global clinical need, many new tuberculosis diagnostic techniques and methods have been developed in recent years, such as new imaging and computer-aided techniques, automated microscopy, short time culture-based diagnosis, immunological diagnosis, and Mycobacterium tuberculosis-specific nucleic acid amplification technology. This paper describes the representative of the techniques and methods, some of which have already been recommended by World Health Organization (WHO), some have been investigated under large-scale clinical studies. These new technologies reflect the future direction in the diagnosis of tuberculosis.