A new statistical method has been developed for the detection, recognition, and measurement of profiles of light beams that are (much) smaller than the diameter of the elementary scanning windows. This method was developed for statistically measuring laser-beam diameters and for subpixel pattern recognition of objects of two dimensions. In this measurement, the gray-level histogram of the objects examined is compared with the simulated histograms of different (in type or size) possible objects, and the recognition (of shape or diameter) is taken on the basis of the comparison. This method does not need ultra-precise movement of the scanning sensors or any additional hardware.