# Fixed Anchors Are Not Enough: Dynamic Retrieval and Persistent Homology for Dataset Distillation

Source: [Fixed Anchors Are Not Enough: Dynamic Retrieval and Persistent Homology for Dataset Distillation](<https://www.sota2.com/research/paper/69a519842d603e6de3e3c9b8>)

Collection index: [llms.txt](<https://www.sota2.com/research/llms.txt>)

Data updated: 2026-03-19T05:00:05.030Z

Authors: Muquan Li, Hang Gou, Yingyi Ma, Rongzheng Wang, Ke Qin, Tao He

Published: 2026-02-27T16:21:07.000Z

## Abstract

Decoupled dataset distillation (DD) compresses large corpora into a few synthetic images by matching a frozen teacher's statistics. However, current residual-matching pipelines rely on static real patches, creating a fit-complexity gap and a pull-to-anchor effect that reduce intra-class diversity and hurt generalization. To address these issues, we introduce RETA -- a Retrieval and Topology Alignment framework for decoupled DD. First, Dynamic Retrieval Connection (DRC) selects a real patch from a prebuilt pool by minimizing a fit-complexity score in teacher feature space; the chosen patch is injected via a residual connection to tighten feature fit while controlling injected complexity. Second, Persistent Topology Alignment (PTA) regularizes synthesis with persistent homology: we build a mutual k-NN feature graph, compute persistence images of components and loops, and penalize topology discrepancies between real and synthetic sets, mitigating pull-to-anchor effect. Across CIFAR-100, Tiny-ImageNet, ImageNet-1K, and multiple ImageNet subsets, RETA consistently outperforms various baselines under comparable time and memory, especially reaching 64.3% top-1 accuracy on ImageNet-1K with ResNet-18 at 50 images per class, +3.1% over the best prior.

## Recorded benchmark results

A research result applies to its stated dataset, split, metric and evaluation configuration. Compare like-for-like settings, preserve the metric's unit and direction, and distinguish paper-reported results from independent reproduction. The best result recorded here is not a claim of exhaustive, current global coverage.

## Original sources and implementation

[Original paper](<https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.24144>)

[PDF](<https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.24144.pdf>)