A system and method for locating a man-made object comprising a transmitter and receiver combination or transceiver configured to emit mixtures of polarizations comprising HH, VV, VH and or HV polarization images, at least one processor configured to form co-polarimetric and cross-polarimetric images, to select a pixel under test and analyze the surrounding pixels by performing spatial averaging using the cross polarimetric image, and to replace the pixel under test and the pixels adjacent thereto with an average pixel value calculated from the pixel under test and pixels adjacent thereto; the at least one processor configured to diminish background effects to produce clearer co-polarimetric and cross-polarimetric images and to locate the left-right point of symmetry indicative of a man-made object by comparing each pixel under test in the cross-polarimetric image to pixels in the vicinity to locate an intensity differential in excess of 3 dB.