Abstract: At present,the incidence of non-tuberculosis mycobacterial(NTM)disease increased year by year in the world. NTM and M. tuberculosis all can cause the lesions in the lung and other organs, they have similar clinical symptoms,and their diagnoses were more difficult. Therefore,the identification of Mycobacterium species had important significance for the diagnosis,treatment and prognostic of disease. Traditional method of biochemical identification is time-consuming,can not satisfy the clinical need. In recent years,MPB64 antigen colloidal gold assay based on immune chromatography technology,the gas phase chromatography and high performance liquid chromatography based on chromatographic technique,the molecular biology technology including gene probe,PCR-RFLP,and PCR-gene sequencing method as the representative,and other new techniques were used for the identification of NTM species,which provided more scientific methods. In this paper,the principle,application and performance of 3 kinds of techniques above mentioned were introduced,and the advantages and limitations of these methods were evaluated. After new techniques continue to be improved,we believe that a fast,reliable,cheap and standardized NTM identification system would be gradually developed.

Key words: Mycobacterium infections, atypical, Laboratory techniques and procedures