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Figure 1 Protocol of this study. Various treatments following myocardial contrast echocardiography (MCE) were performed within 2 h after the onset of myocardial infarction (MI). Half of the rats in each group were killed on day 7 for myocardial hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) immunostain. The rest of the rats underwent serial echocardiography until week 3, when they were subjected to cardiac catheterization and were killed for histopathologic assessments.