diff --git a/utils/fed_util.py b/utils/fed_util.py
index d0715b2..094b47b 100644
--- a/utils/fed_util.py
+++ b/utils/fed_util.py
@@ -267,7 +267,7 @@ def init_model(model_name, num_classes) -> YOLO:
     return model
 
 
-def build_valset_if_available(cfg, params, args=None) -> Optional[Dataset]:
+def build_valset_if_available(cfg, params, args=None, val_name: str = "val2017") -> Optional[Dataset]:
     """
     Try to build a validation Dataset.
     - If cfg['val_txt'] exists, use it.
@@ -276,6 +276,8 @@ def build_valset_if_available(cfg, params, args=None) -> Optional[Dataset]:
     Args:
         cfg: config dict
         params: params dict for Dataset
+        args: optional args object (for input_size)
+        val_name: name of the validation set folder with no prefix (default: "val2017")
     Returns:
         Dataset or None
     """
@@ -283,18 +285,24 @@ def build_valset_if_available(cfg, params, args=None) -> Optional[Dataset]:
     val_txt = cfg.get("val_txt", "")
     if not val_txt:
         ds_root = cfg.get("dataset_path", "")
-        guess = os.path.join(ds_root, "val.txt") if ds_root else ""
+        guess = os.path.join(ds_root, f"{val_name}.txt") if ds_root else ""
         val_txt = guess if os.path.exists(guess) else ""
 
-    val_files = _read_list_file(val_txt)
-    if not val_files:
+    # val_files = _read_list_file(val_txt)
+
+    filenames = []
+    with open(val_txt, "r", encoding="utf-8") as f:
+        for filename in f.readlines():
+            filename = os.path.basename(filename.rstrip())
+            filenames.append(f"{ds_root}/images/{val_name}/" + filename)
+    if not filenames:
         import warnings
 
         warnings.warn("No validation dataset found.")
         return None
 
     return Dataset(
-        filenames=val_files,
+        filenames=filenames,
         input_size=input_size,
         params=params,
         augment=True,