Abstract: Muscle food is one of the most perishable food products because of its vulnerability to microbial spoilage, which can result in critical food safety problems. Traditional techniques for detection and evaluation of microbial spoilage in muscle foods are tedious, laborious, destructive, and time-consuming. In recent years, spectroscopic and imaging technologies have shown great potentials for the assessment of food quality and safety due to their nondestructive, noninvasive, cost-effective, and rapid responsive nature. This review focuses on the applications of several valuable spectroscopic techniques including visible and near-infrared spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, fluorescence spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and hyperspectral imaging for the rapid and nondestructive detection of microbial spoilage in common muscle foods such as meat, poultry, fish, and related products. Combined with chemometric analysis, such as spectral preprocessing and modeling methods, these potential technologies have been successfully developed for the determination of total viable count, aerobic plate count, Enterobacteriaceae, Pseudomonas, Escherichia coli, and lactic acid bacteria loads in muscle foods. Moreover, the advantages and disadvantages of these techniques are discussed and some perspectives about future trends are also presented.
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