The standard treatment of galaxy rotation curves assumes a constant stellar mass-to-light ratio across all radii within a galaxy. This assumption discards radial structure in the baryonic mass distribution and attributes the resulting discrepancy to dark matter. This paper introduces a computable quantity, the integrated baryonic acceleration deficit D(r), defined as the cumulative integral of the difference between a fixed acceleration threshold and the measured baryonic acceleration profile. The normalized form of this quantity correlates with the radially-varying mass-to-light ratio required to match observed rotation curves at a median per-galaxy Pearson r = 0.947 across 175 SPARC disk galaxies. The gradient-based correction reduces mass-to-light prediction error by 85.1% relative to the constant assumption, holds across all morphological types (S0 through BCD) and all gas fraction regimes, and requires zero free parameters. 22 galaxies (12.9%) exhibit anti-correlation, identified as systems with singularity center gravity well consumption where the central gravitational well has absorbed gradient structure below the observational threshold. These systems are identifiable from a single-pass diagnostic. The results reframe the mass discrepancy as a model mis-specification in the baryonic mass accounting, not as evidence for non-baryonic matter.
joe garrett (Tue,) studied this question.