The construction and performance of a system for the spatial characterization of a CO² pulsed laser beam is described. Using thermally quenched fluorescence a direct imaging technique has been developed for single shot CO² laser pulse beam profiling. A CCD video camera and framestore interfaced to a PC computer are used to image the spatial intensity distribution produced by a CO² pulse incident upon a temperature dependent luminescent screen. The resolution is similar to much more expensive pyroelectric detector array techniques with all the advantages of two dimensional beam processing.