Pattern Fidelity Index and Regenerative Coherence

Regeneration is not simply growth after injury. It is growth constrained by retained pattern information. This manuscript develops Pattern Fidelity as a measurable companion principle to Cooperative Coherence Theory. Pattern Fidelity is defined as the capacity of local cellular populations to perceive, maintain, and restore organism-level target states following disruption. The paper integrates developmental biology, regeneration research, bioelectric patterning, Wnt-Hox signaling, ion-channel control, extracellular matrix and laminin context, gap junction coupling, and cancer ecology. It adds a Pattern Fidelity Index (PFI), a hierarchy of component fidelities, a worked numerical example, and explicit falsification criteria. Human embryonic tail regression, lizard and salamander tail regeneration, planarian polarity rewriting, and Xenopus tail regeneration are used as examples showing that the same toolkits can produce construction, pruning, regeneration, scarring, malformed repair, cancer, or irreversible loss of pattern coherence depending on timing, context, coupling, and target-state fidelity. The central claim is that growth becomes regenerative only when it remains coupled to structural memory, bioelectric coordination, positional identity, repair capacity, and higher-order organismal coherence.