Persistent Homology with Path-Representable Distances on Graph Data

Abstract: Topological data analysis over graph has been actively studied to understand the underlying topological structure of data. However, limited research has been conducted on how different distance definitions impact persistent homology and the corresponding topological inference. To address this, we introduce the concept of path-representable distance in a general form and prove the main theorem for the case of cost-dominated distances. We found that a particular injection exists among the $1$-dimensional persistence barcodes of these distances with a certain condition. We prove that such an injection relation exists for $0$- and $1$-dimensional homology. For higher dimensions, we provide the counterexamples that show such a relation does not exist.