The objectives of this study were to investigate the feasibility of hyperspectral scattering imaging to predict the bacterial contamination in meat nondestructively, and propose an optimal approach for detecting low levels of total viable count (TVC) contamination in beef. Fresh beef samples were obtained from a commercial slaughtering plant, and stored at 4 degrees C for 0-12 days. The visible/near-infrared (VIS/NIR) hyperspectral images in the backscattering mode were acquired from 3-5 beef samples on each day of the experiment, in parallel with microbiological analysis to enumerate the TVC population. Lorentzian function was used to resolve the light scattering information within the hyperspectral image and consequently Lorentzian parameters, which represented different hyperspectral scattering characteristics were extracted. In this study, not only the individual Lorentzian parameters but also the parameter combinations were used to establish the multivariate statistical models for predicting beef TVC, based on the modeling methods of principal component regression (PCR), partial least squares regression (PLSR), and back propagation neural network (BPNN), respectively. The models established using individual Lorentzian parameters did not perform well in predicting low levels of TVC contamination in beef, and the best prediction result could only achieved with the correlation coefficient of prediction set (R-p) and root mean squared error of prediction set (RMSEP) of 0.81 and 1.27 log CFU/g, respectively. Based on the parameter combinations, the best modeling results were achieved with R-p and RMSEP of 0.86 and 0.93 log CFU/g, 0.87 and 0.79 log CFU/g, 0.90 and 0.88 log CFU/g by PCR, PLSR, and BPNN methods, respectively, which confirmed the superiority of the parameter combination method. The results of this study demonstrated for the first time that hyperspectral scattering imaging combined with Lorentzian function and the proposed parameter combination method could be used to detect low levels of bacterial contamination in beef nondestructively. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.