Abstract: In this paper, a fuzzy based impulse noise removal technique has been proposed. The proposed filter is based on noise detection, fuzzy set construction, histogram estimation and fuzzy filtering process. Noise detection process is used to identify the set of noisy pixels which are used for estimating the histogram of the original image. Estimated histogram of the original image is used for fuzzy set construction using fuzzy number construction algorithm. Fuzzy filtering process is the main component of the proposed technique. It consists of fuzzification, defuzzification and predicted intensity processes to remove impulse noise. Sensitivity analysis of the proposed technique has been performed by varying the number of fuzzy sets. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed technique achieves much better performance than state-of-the-art filters. The comparison of the results is based on global error measure as well as local error measures i.e. mean square error (MSE) and structural similarity index measure (SSIM).