The present article deals with the analysis of transient radiative transfer caused by a short-pulse laser irradiation on a medium. A general formulation of the governing transient radiative transfer equation applicable to a 3-D Cartesian enclosure has presented. To solve the transient radiative transfer equation, formulations have been presented for the three commonly used methods the study of radiative heat transfer, viz., the discrete transfer method, the discrete ordinate method and the finite volume method. show the uniformity in the formulations in the three methods, the intensity directions and the angular quadrature schemes for the incident radiation and heat flux have been taken the same. To validate the formulations and to compare the performance of the methods, effect of a square short-pulse laser having pulse-width of the order of a ferntosecond on transmittance and reflectance signals case of an absorbing and scattering planar layer has been studied. Effects of the medium properties such as the extinction coefficient, scattering albedo and the anisotropy factor and the laser properties such as the pulse-width and the angle of incidence on the transmittance and the reflectance signals have been compared. In all the cases, results of the three methods were found to compare very well each other. Computationally, the discrete ordinate method was found to be the most efficient. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.