Taking the test pipeline of urban water supply and drainage network base as an object, the field experiment was carried out on a buried depth 0.6 m water pipe with a diameter of 100 mm, to explore the feasibility of 3D ground-penetrating radar (GPR) in detecting pipeline leakage. Perpendicular to the pipeline, 31 parallel test lines were set around the leak-point and the C-scan GPR data were collected in the experiment. By comparing the 2D radar profile and 3D migration imaging of radar data before and after the leakage, it is found that 3D GPR can detect and identify the geometric shape of the underground target more effectively, and determine the scope and size of the surrounding soil infiltration area caused by the leakage of underground water pipes, so as to determine the leakage location