Total viable count (TVC) is one of the most important indexes in evaluation of chicken's freshness. This paper attempted to quantify the TVC in chicken using a novel nondestructive sensing tool based on colorimetric sensor array. First, we fabricated a novel and low-cost colorimetric sensors array, with a specific colorific fingerprint to volatile compounds from chicken, using printing chemically responsive dyes on a C2 reverse silica-gel flat plate. And an artificial olfactory system based on colorimetric sensor array was developed for data acquisition. In addition, we proposed a novel efficient back propagation adaptive boosting (BP-AdaBoost) algorithm for data modeling, and we compared it with the classic modeling algorithms. The optimum results were achieved using BP-AdaBoost modeling algorithm as follows: the root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP) = 0.5430 lg CFU/g and the determination coefficient (Rp) = 0.8119 in the prediction set. This work demonstrates that the artificial olfactory technique based on colorimetric sensor array, as a nondestructive sensing tool, has a high potential to quantify TVC in chicken. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.