Given a compact metric space X, we associate to it an inverse sequence of finite T 0 topological spaces. The inverse limit of this inverse sequence contains a homeomorphic copy of X that is a strong deformation retract. We provide a method to approximate the homology groups of X and other algebraic invariants. Finally, we study computational aspects and the implementation of this method.Example 1.2. We consider the topological space X ⊆ R 2 given in Figure 1. Let U denote the open cover given by U 1 , U 2 , U 3 , U 4 and all the possible intersections of them. It is clear that N (U) has the same homotopy type of X, see Figure 1. This approach has a drawback. It is not always easy to find an open cover satisfying the hypothesis of the nerve theorem. Recently, interesting results have been obtained modifying