Seven specimens of 45 steel with different residual strains were prepared by homogeneous plastic tensile test. The microstructure of the specimens was observed by scanning electron microscopy and the texture characteristics of the specimens were studied by X-ray diffraction. The results showed that plastic deformation mainly leads to dislocation increment in the microstructure rather than obvious deformed grain morphology, texture and residual stress. Then the dislocation density of each sample was calculated by X-ray diffraction method. The MBN signals of the samples were tested by magnetic Barkhausen noise method and the corresponding RMS (root mean square) values were calculated. The results showed that the dislocation density increases and the RMS value decreases with the increase of plastic deformation magnitude, the phenomenon was explained deeply. By establishing the correlation between dislocation density and RMS value, it was found that there was a good linear relationship between dislocation density and RMS value. According to the formula provided by the fitting curve, the dislocation density can be predicted by measuring the RMS value of any degree of plastic deformation.